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Who Cares If Samsung Copied Apple?
hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running an article that's questioning the very premise of the Apple v Samsung case. From the article: 'It isn't the first time Apple has been involved in a high-stakes "copying" court case. If you go back to the mid-1990s, there was their famous "look and feel" lawsuit against Microsoft. Apple's case there was eerily similar to the one they're running today: "we innovated in creating the graphical user interface; Microsoft copied us; if our competitors simply copy us, it's impossible for us to keep innovating." Apple ended up losing the case. But it's what happened next that's really fascinating. Apple didn't stop innovating at all.'"
couldn't care less!
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
Xerox created the interface which apple purchased in stock swap, it was not apple's original innovation.
Obviously the patent squabbles in these cases are ridiculous - the only reason we have functioning high-tech industry in the US is that most companies are not like Apple, and do not use patents offernsively.
It's a good time to review the reasons why, for example, software patents do not work, and can never be made to work:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Why_abolish_software_patents
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It isn't very easy to tell an original from a copy, as this poor reporter found out (too late):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=789he-8T_-E
The object in that video looks like it was copied from something with rounded corners. Could it be an Apple copy of something? Don't know. Still. As always. I prefer the original.
This isn't true. Apple DID stop innovating. You missed the section of time where Apple was minutes from bankrupt before Jobs came back with a load of money.
iCare
... and Apple copied on Xerox
After Apple lost the "Microsoft coppied our GUI" case, their desktop GUI remained unchanged for 10 years. System 7 through 9 were basically identical..... they couldn't even multitask properly (used cooperative multitasking which led to misbehaving programs refusing to give-up the CPU & freezing the system). Apple said they would stop innovating their GUI if competitors simply copied their ideas, and that's essentially what happened.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
does!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Apple pretty much HAS to sue Samsung.
Even though in doing so, they actually may increase the sales of Samsung tablets. Some percentage of people who wouldn't have given a non-Apple-tablet a second glance may now decide "Hey, if Apple is 'worried' enough to sue over this, it must be pretty good."
However, Apple really has no choice. If they don't sue, then that would be the "green light" for the "Allwinners" of the world to come in and just crank out $40 blister-pack 'ePads', absolutely indistinguishable-from-iPad (until you actually tried to use them!) tablets.
Not only would that eat into Apple's sales/profits, but it would eventually (and wrongly) leak into the consumer mindset that ALL tablets are shit. And that could make the iPad market dry up as quickly as it was created.
So, apple "steals" from open source...
How can you steal from open source? Especially when they give back an enormous amount of development to the open source movement (such as http://www.apple.com/opensource/ ).
But, hey, why let facts and logic get in the way of a good ol' Apple bashing, right?...
Having other people copy your designs doesn't mean you can't innovate anymore. On the contrary: by innovating you will stay ahead of the pack.
Also, copies always mean the copier is playing catch-up. They always have to wait and see what you've done, before they can try to do the same. By innovating you will keep the advantage, having everybody copy your work just means you have to innovate even harder and faster. That's tough of course, much easier to stop the rest from picking up your innovative ideas.
The article makes a fair point. If everyone is allowed to copy everyone else (and they already are anyway including Apple), the only way for a company to distinguish itself is to innovate faster than the competition can copy. This actually promotes innovation, not stifle it.
"Good artists copy. Great artists steal. And at Apple, we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
[Source: Isaac's authorized biography]
Apparently he never liked it if someone else followed this axiom, though.
Not all copies are inferior. Japan got huge in the 80s/90s by "copying and improving". And they were not the first that did this; it's how UK lost out to mainland Europe in the later stages of the industrial revolution: they were the first to industrialise, but the continent copied there methods and products, and improved on them.
China is currently very much in the copy phase, sooner or later they will also start to innovate themselves (some Chinese companies already do that), followed by a time in which the establised companies will be out-innovated. It may take a while, the Chinese don't seem to be very fast in picking up the innovation part, but if the world's history is anything to go by, sooner or later they will.
Well actually Apple never developed the GUI or User Interface. The "GUI" was actually developed decades before Apple even built a computer. I was trying to find the video from youtube but it might of got taken down. There was a video of a researcher in the 60's playing with a mouse and keyboard and moving a mouse pointer. Unless Steve Jobs was about 80 when he died then I fail to see how Apple invented the user interface.
However extracting this out, does apple really invent anything? Siri is just voice analysis which isn't new or clever or even that hard, as I did music genre detection for my final project in University, so I can tell you it's pretty simple. Apple didn't invent the smart phone, they didn't create the tablet, they didn't create Unix which is what OS X is based on and they didn't invent the intel CPU they run. So what does Apple invent? Having a little bit of software for messages or screen locking or even a GUI layout is hardly inventing anything, I consider more a look and feel which personally I don't think should be protected I mean anyone could do the same thing, you don't have to be a leader in the computer field.
So I rest with what does Apple invent? Seems to me they take and sue but thats about it.
You mean the ones that Apple copied - after Jobs and Xerox negotiated a deal to allow Xerox to but 100,000 shares of pre-IPO Apple stock.
In other words, Apple was happy to give value for value received. Why is this story constantly repeated as an example of Apple being underhanded?
The parallels of current Apple to early 90s Apple are numerous.
- They were first widely used in multitouch and gui
- Their OS is more user-friendly
- Development and modification of their OS is more tightly controlled
- Crucially, they don't license their OS
- Steve Jobs isn't there to save them with brand-new product lines
So now, they're stuck with a market-leading position that is being slowly eroded by the open ARM + Android platform (Armdroid as the new Wintel?), and are being forced to fight on several fronts at once: hardware design, OS design, and developer loyalty.
The litigation strategy is just one more parallel, and it seems destined to fail.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
They're just repackaging old ideas with better marketting.
And not giving up, which may be Apple, or just Jobs, when the Newton didn't work they came back, when NeXT failed, objective C stuck around
how can it be counterfeiting? it has samsung written on the front and no apple logo's or other trademarks in sight.
Counterfeiting is about trying to pass 1 product off as another. They certainly look alike but without trying to pass it off as an apple product it can't be counterfeiting.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
You quoted the quotes and still missed the point. Not saying it was or wasn't a great point or that I even agree with it but you definitely missed it.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Who Cares If Samsung Copied Apple? I don't think anyone really cares about this except corporations and lawyers.
Apple should start playing by they own rules.
If a company infringes someone elses patents then they should lose the right to defend their own.
Apple doesn't license other peoples patented technologies - they just infringe. Ask Nokia how they magically got around $650 million from Apple last year along with an ongoing royalty payment for every iPhone. Because Apple refused to license key Nokia technology and just blatently infringed when they refused the terms Nokia offered. They then went to the courts claiming that Nokia were unfair to them in the terms and so shouldn't be allowed to hold the patent.
And it wasn't a "key technology" like rounded corners - it was GSM to make it work like a phone!
One should never be able to patent the what (eg. gui appearance/behavior), only the how (eg. specific implementation). Thus, it was right that Apple lost its MS suit, though they were the superior company (at that time).
However, Apple really has no choice. If they don't sue, then that would be the "green light" for the "Allwinners" of the world to come in and just crank out $40 blister-pack 'ePads', absolutely indistinguishable-from-iPad (until you actually tried to use them!) tablets.
I wouldn't want that!
I got my iPad because I wanted to look hip, important, and as one with money. To have those 'ePads' as you say, would cheapen the image - like those KIAs that look like Mercedes Benz. As it is with the financing, you now see all those wannabes on the road with Benzes and BMWs - German cars are becoming the brand for those who can get credit to buy or lease.
Tell that to my Professors back in the universities on who cares about copying!
Yes, please do some research in to this issue because you obviously do not have a clear picture of what spare had and what apple produced.
they copy, refine and cultivate. Really, just think about it. Im pretty sure I just burnt some Karma, but worth it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
Whilst I am hoping that Samsung largely wins its case, I can see that there should be limits to what can be copied and how much a rival product can simply imitate the originator. Apple should be able to protect the unique aspects of its design, and both Samsung and Apple should be able to patent technological innovation where it is appropriate to do so.
Having said that, I feel Apple is trying to grab too much in this case. It is obvious that Apple didn't come up with the general idea for the layout of a tablet, even if they were the first to market with a genuine product that consumers wanted. It is similarly obvious that everyone wanted to go to a touch screen phone layout at around the same time, and the ergonomics and layout for that are obvious.
Whilst the gap is narrowing, Apple should realise that they really make their money from producing a product that, whilst on the leading edge of techology, is a polished design where all the parts have been carefully put together. I have a Samsung phone at the moment, and whilst there are aspects of it that are probably better than an iPhone, the whole product lacks the design harmony of its rival. The UK judge who, in dismissing Apples case, said that the Samsung product was 'not as cool' probably expressed it best.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
So how about companies whose expertise is not in coming up with novel ideas that don't work very well, but rather in design--taking concepts that are well known and finally making them actually work well? Clearly (considering how rarely it is done) that is often harder than coming up with the original germ of an idea. And it clearly is not risk free: there are many of examples of companies that introduced original designs, but failed because they could not compete with other companies who simply copied the designs of others.
CORPORATIONS should not have functional, limited or unlimited monopolies on DESIGN any more than you should have to pay a tax on buying a knife that cuts because it is sharp. We need to STOP this destructive meme that once you do something innovative (NOT inventive) you should be continually rewarded in the future for that!
In design, there are the good designers, and then there are the rock stars. Do you notice no one in fashion is bothering to patent the "look and feel" of this season's clothing lines, or suing the inevitable cheaper knockoffs? The rock stars, the industry leaders, are already moving on to the Next Big Thing. This is how design is supposed to work - innovate, be rewarded handsomely, and then move on to your next project! The designers of the iPhone or iPad are never going to hurt for work again - it doesn't matter how many knockoffs come later. The CORPORATION may go under if it sits on its laurels, but that is what is supposed to happen! If Apple is losing ground because their newer iPhones have less and less about them to justify their profit margins, then the answer is for them to innovate again, with something that consumers will find worth rewarding them for again, or die. Hint: adding 4G functionality to your next iPhone iteration probably doesn't qualify.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
If the headline is a question, then the answer is no... oh... nevermind.
If you go back to the mid-1990s, there was their famous "look and feel" lawsuit against Microsoft. Apple's case there was eerily similar to the one they're running today: "we innovated in creating the graphical user interface; Microsoft copied us; if our competitors simply copy us, it's impossible for us to keep innovating." Apple ended up losing the case.
The Apple v. Microsoft case was on copyright, not patents. Specifically, the court ruled that:
Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]...
and look-and-feel simply isn't covered there.
With that distinction and proper categorization in mind, the article misses a crucial difference between the 1990s and today: Apple made a significant push to protecting its designs with patents. The lack of such protection almost killed Apple in the 1990s, and its with that protection now that Apple is well on its way to being the largest company ever.
It's arguable that Apple has ever innovated in the first place. Steve Jobs used to brag about how he was the best thief in the industry. And to his credit, he was. He even went so far as to fly the Jolly Rodger above Apple headquarters.
This signature intentionally left blank.
If he has eMail down there, prepare for a strongly worded one, samsung...
The Pirate Party here in Sweden been arguing just these points for a long time now. Innovation is not happening in a vacuum. Great ideas inspire others to come up with even greater ideas. By sharing the information and sharing the data others can look at it and improve it and the speed of research will increase.
The patent system is not something that foster innovation. Its is something that hinder innovation. Remove it
Also the billions of money going to patents trolls and feeding lawyers to hand patents could be instead used to invest in research to further the science of mankind.
Just saying it like it are.
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.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Jobs was hell bent on stopping Android because he believed Google copied from them. At the time Schmidt sat on the board of Apple and was given advance early looks at the iPhone. As Android started to look more like iOS, Jobs was starting to believe that it wasn't a coincidence.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Intellectual Sharecropping
"If we cannot own people, we'll own their thoughts and charge them for the privilege of thinking."
"The chains of bondage can be forged from more then iron and steel."
"Imagination is a dangerous force that allows people to dream of a better world without us."
"The most important factor in tyranny is to ensure a high cost of challenging it."
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
The UK lost out because at a certain point, the innovations necessary to continue to progress required more and more specialized technical education. The British University system was simply not set up to handle that. It was designed to turn the sons of Lords into Lords, and the upper middle-class into educated Lordly-like young men, optimized for leading business, but NOT in leading technical innovation (or military strategy, for that matter). Such a hands-on education was beneath them.
In addition, they always felt they didn't need such innovation in re-inventing that which they already had because of their extensive colonial might. Why invent a blue dye and undercut the price tag you were already commanding by being able to bring in the dye from the east-asian source?
Germany, on the other hand, spent most of the last decades of the 19th century realizing that trade schools, which the British wouldn't invest in, were precisely the means by which Germany could catch up to the rest of the world. German innovation happened most in the field of chemistry, where they were more and more able to invent (from coal and coal tar) products that could make up for places they lacked both colonies or military power. The process for sodium-nitrates alone (originally to be a fertilizer) produced enough explosives to preserve the German army for years through WW1.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Whether you think these cases are a waste of time or not, "who cares" is an ill informed attitude. In fact, you're getting into intentional ignorance territory. "Who cares" isn't how the legal system works, or really, any system.
There is no irony lost on the fact that Apple have chosen rare and select species of feline names (SnowLeopard, LION, MountainLION...) for product innovation. AAPL do not reproduce household variety cats...and that speaks to the heart of this case.
An inventor and ex-NeXT developer who has been inside the innovation washing machine, this media tasty trial is _the_ most important decision in post modern economics. Are all cats created equal as SAMSUNG would have you believe or are their rare and protected species that are endangered and lynchpins in the ecosystem of global commerce?
Apple, Samsung, et al all have huge legal departments. These legal departments have to do something to ensure that they get paid large sums of money.
What a better way than mutual patent infringement lawsuits that tie them up in court battles for years?
Job security, nothing more!
... in this case for the fashion industry, but hey, it's interesting and relevant:
http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html
"Innovation" is rarely little more than just a buzzword. The truth is that Apple rarely "innovates" (That's not an insult) At least not in the big picture. What Apple is good at is the *execution*.
Apple didn't invent the MP3 player, they just made it better than most others, and marketed the hell out of it.
Apple didn't invent high-end laptops, they just made them better than most others, and marketed the hell out of them.
Apple didn't invent the smartphone, they just made it better than most others, and marketed the hell out of it.
Apple didn't invent the tablet, they just made it better than the others, and marketed the hell out of it.
That's why they're so threatened by Samsung. Because Samsung is doing the same thing. Samsung didn't invent the "iPhone," they just made it better. Just like they didn't invent the "iPad," they just made it better too.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
If we hardly manufacture anything now and IP is our primary "resource"...
Strawman argument. The US has a $3.7 TRILLION manufacturing sector and it is growing. Just in case that isn't clear, measured by value the US has manufactures more than any other country in the world by a wide margin. By itself the US manufacturing sector would be in top 5 economies in the world. The notion that "we don't manufacture anything anymore" is complete nonsense. The only change is that products with a high proportion of labor cost (labor intensive) are now manufactured where labor is cheaper. However a huge number of products have a low proportion of labor cost (capital intensive) and those are made here. We manufacture automobiles, airplanes, pharmaceuticals, agriculture products, chemicals, integrated circuits, and much much more. The death of US manufacturing has been greatly exaggerated.
The change in manufacturing in the US is that it is evolving somewhat like farming did 100 years ago - fewer workers as a percent of population but producing more. As a proportion of the population manufacturing jobs are going to continue to decrease for some time. That does not mean that the US will cease being a manufacturing powerhouse however.
Apple used the phone icon as evidence that Samsung copied from them. The problem is they stole the design of that handset from Bell. For Apple to steal a design then try to sue someone else who also copied the design is mind boggling.
Or, rather, check up the history of the USA and copyright/patents and especially Hollywood.
> Apple ended up losing the case. But it's what happened next that's really fascinating. Apple didn't stop innovating at all.'"
Yeah, competition is a bitch. You have to keep working. Much nicer not to have any competition - no innovation required at all. Ask Comcast about that.
Who was it again who said "Good artists copy, great artists steal"? Steve Jobs? Oh right, he stole that quote from Picasso. No it isn't ironic, he did so deliberately, but the point is: "stealing" is what artists (and tech companies, and nearly everyone ever) do. It isn't a bad thing: in fact, it's very very good. You take good ideas, and you make them better. You add competition, with some (minor) improvement, then the original creator steals back your improvement (which Apple has done plenty of), improves on that, then you steal that, and so on and so forth. You know who wins in that arrangement? Literally everyone, but especially the customers. You know who wins when you protect the original with lawyers so that no-one else can make something similar? The lawyers. Not even the original creator, in the end: just lawyers. Which is not surprising, considering lawyers also wrote the law in the first place.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
So, apple "steals" from open source for their opsys, and monetizes it, and now they are bent about android coming from open source and not charging for it. I get it.
I don't think you do.
First, you can "steal" something that is open source. They abide by the licenses in question. They have given back to existing projects (BSD, khtml/WebKit) as well as with new project (LLVM/clang).
TANSTAAFL: when it comes to Google, what you do not pay in cash-money, you pay in your information being sent to advertisers.
If you can stifle copying you can become stagnant without fear of being overtaken.
Counterfeiting is about trying to pass 1 product off as another. They certainly look alike but without trying to pass it off as an apple product it can't be counterfeiting.
There are some amazing counterfeits out there. A trip to any swap meet/flea market across the US will turn up some good (and terrible) counterfeit goods from Coach bags, Louboutin shoes, to Rolex watches.
The Chinese have mastered the art of counterfeiting goods (and, apparently, entire companies).
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/27/technology/27iht-nec.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/11/us-apple-china-fake-idUSTRE77A3U820110811
While the Samsung products may have elements of the look of some Apple products, they're not counterfeit.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." - Jobs, interviewed in Triumph of the Nerds on PBS (1996)
"I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." - Jobs, as quoted in Walter Isaacson's biography (2011)
So it's OK if Apple do it, but not otherwise?
That does however mean we need a lot less people, or a lot more welfare.
No, it means those people will do something else other than manufacturing. When this country was founded, something like 80% of the workforce was in agriculture. Now the number is something like 2%. You will note that the population did not shrink (quite the opposite in fact) and the country did not become a welfare state. There is much more to an economy than simply farming or manufacturing. Needing fewer people in those sectors means we can use the labor force productively elsewhere.
You should ask them about the modern mouse cursor (as opposed to a Missile-Command style crosshair, overlapping windows, windows with shadows, identifying icons, you know all the stuff the Xerox PARC didn't have.
By inovation they actually mean copying their interface will force them to face competition and not be able to monopolize the market.
How can something be 100% stable and have 2 kernel panics?
Two kernel panics in at least 400 uses means the system is over 99.5% stable. With two significant figures, this rounds to 100%.
With Gnome taking a bit of a dive, Unity a bit on the rise, and Metro just starting out, these are certainly interesting times. Just grab some popcorn and see what happens.
Yeah, I've decided to run Xubuntu on my laptop so I can watch from the sidelines while eating Junior Mints.
AC said "cite sources"
I cite sources and note that it's very well documented.
AC says something completely unrelated.
AC proves him/herself to be a toll.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
"it's what happened next that's really fascinating. Apple didn't stop innovating at all.'"
What followed was even more dramatic. Microsoft, since they could get away with copying, settled for that and stopped innovating. Eventually they imploded and lost their market dominance while Apple has far surpassed them.
I would never bother buying a Samsung as a replacement for the iPhone, iPad, iPod. Samsung has only a tiny part of the puzzle even if they totally copy Apple's hardware and software. They still lack all of the smooth integration with my laptop / desktop, the iTunes store and the enormous depth of software and other media available on the Macintosh which I use daily to get my work done.
The point they miss is all of these pieces of hardware are just tools. Tools to let us get our work done or what ever else we're doing. All alone the simple hardware is next to nothing.
There's another issue too. I don't trust Samsung to continue producing or supporting products. They're too wishy-washy. It is a waste of my time to change every year.
Let's assume for a second it was counterfeiting. Who is the victim? The person who paid for the counterfeit good. Apple would be an uninterested third party.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
That's a pretty asinine statement. Apple *did* stop innovating for a while (or at least nearly did as all attempts to innovate were dismal failures). They started copying the IBM-clone business model and started looking to outside OS's for the next-gen Mac OS. IIRC BeOS was a strong contender until Apple decided to buy NeXT and turn NeXTStep into Mac OS X. The innovation began again after they brought Steve Jobs back and he killed everything that had been done in the 1990's (after he was ousted). Apple very nearly died not long after that original trial and most analysts thought that even the second coming of Jobs wasn't going to save the company.
All "evidence" of innovation in this article happened *after* Jobs came back when the company was at death's doorstep. Even more damning for the author is that all of that "evidence" was patented trade dress, design, and technology that Apple has successfully defended (e.g. eMachines tried to make a rip-off of the iMac and got sued by Apple, I owned one because it's what my parents bought me in High School).
-OS X - Not really Apple's big innovation. It was their acquisition of NeXTStep that lead to OS X and the return of Steve Jobs and innovation at Apple.
-iMac (original CRT version) - Design championed by Steve Jobs after his return, successfully sued eMachines over copying nearly exactly (even came in several bright colors, I had blue)
-iPod - Several years *after* the company had regained some footing, IIRC several patents involved with the iPod were also successfully defended
-iPhone - MANY years *after* the company had become a powerhouse even bigger than before
You can only win a war when you don't pretend your not at war. By that I mean, we no longer fight wars to finish them, we fight wars with the hopes of exhausting the resources of the other side before we exhaust the support of our own people.
If we had fought Afghanistan like we fought the Germans in WW2 it would be a lot closer to over if not. When you do not break the population supporting the other side the other side itself will never break. As it stands now, those in Afghanistan have no reason to quit fighting, they haven't really lost anything they value and those who live there are not to the point where they would put a stop to those supposedly fighting for them
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Seriously.
Using that type of analysis, then no company has ever invented anything. Everything is just some tweak or combination of existing technologies.
Seriously, name a single invention.
They just made it better. Name a single invention.
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.
There is a grey line between being influenced/inspired by other ideas/products and plain plagiarism.
Very similar to porn, you know it when you see it.
One would be recognizing the trend in state of the art the other a dishonest and selfish appropriation by cloning.
Apple would not be where it is now if they didn't copy from some one else. That's how advances in knowledge, science, arts get to evolve.
Apple has to prove a very tight case of plagiarism where is obvious Samnsung just simply cloned their product.
I don't think that's the case.
Lawyers rejoice!
The whole point about Google was that Jobs believed Schmidt used his position to give Google an advantage to compete against Apple and not that Google did it organically. You know why Apple hasn't sued MS for Metro or RIM of BBOS 7? Because Apple does not believe these were copied from them.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"Picasso had a saying - `good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." - Steve Jobs
"Google fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product." - Steve Jobs
Have a look at Xiaomi's new phone. Manufactured by Foxconn, sporting a 4-core krait CPU by Qualcomm, a Sharp LCD screen which is likely to match whatever the iPhone 5 comes up with, a unique Android interface called MIUI (if you think it's an iPhone clone I suggest you try it before you judge - it goes way beyond what Apple offers), a choice of thin and thick batteries and much more which definitely puts this phone up there with Samsung and Apple phones. Slowly yes, but they're starting to get there.
They didn't stop innovating because they never started. Everything Apple has ever "created" is a copy of some other product, with minor tweaks and alterations. Very few tech companies, in fact, are stand-alone "innovators" -- everyone copies everyone else, giving copied tech some flair and individuality along the way, and the entire industry moves forward as a result. Apple's lawsuits are disingenuous at best, and actively harmful to the industry at worst.
Who was it again who said "Good artists copy, great artists steal"? Steve Jobs? Oh right, he stole that quote from Picasso. No it isn't ironic, he did so deliberately, but the point is: "stealing" is what artists (and tech companies, and nearly everyone ever) do. It isn't a bad thing: in fact, it's very very good. You take good ideas, and you make them better. You add competition, with some (minor) improvement, then the original creator steals back your improvement (which Apple has done plenty of), improves on that, then you steal that, and so on and so forth. You know who wins in that arrangement? Literally everyone, but especially the customers. You know who wins when you protect the original with lawyers so that no-one else can make something similar? The lawyers. Not even the original creator, in the end: just lawyers. Which is not surprising, considering lawyers also wrote the law in the first place.
Gee, we seem to keep coming down to this same answer in the end almost every damn time...way too much litigation going on today. Someone should probably file a complaint or suggest a motion to change the laws. What do we need to do that again? Oh yeah, an army of lawyers who would actually agree that money isn't more important than anything else in the worl...ah, nevermind.
Now we know why not a damn thing changes.
Ever.
“Apple, which ended its third quarter with $1.2 billion in cash, will use the additional $150 million to invest in its core markets of education and creative content, Anderson said.”
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592FE887-5CA1-4F30-BD62-407362B533B9.html
http://lightbox.time.com/2011/10/06/in-a-private-light-diana-walkers-photos-of-steve-jobs/#10
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/05/apples-stock-rise-could-have-meant-5-billion-for-microsoft/
“Less than 12 hours before his big announcement, nobody here knows yet about the bombshell to come. In fact, Jobs is still negotiating it here at the Castle--on a cell phone. "Hi, Bill," you hear him say in the echo chamber of the old hall. Then his voice drops, and for nearly an hour he paces the stage, running through last-minute details with Gates. All the while, he leans over his computer, paces, lies down on the stage, paces, lurks in dark corners, paces and talks, paces and talks.
This is the fateful call for the boy titans of the personal-computer revolution, meant to settle the war. At one point, talking about Apple, Jobs says, "There are a lot of good things, happily--and a lot of screwed-up things." Then, to his crew, he yells, "Have we got satellite contact with the other side?" Assured this has been taken care of, he answers a question from Gates about what to wear on the morrow ("I'm just going to wear a white shirt," he assures him), and he finally ends the conversation with a heartfelt "Thank you for your support of this company. I think the world's a better place for it." And so that's how Apple and Microsoft, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, finally seal it--on a cell-phone call.
The deal is vintage Jobs. Amelio began the process of repairing relations between the two longtime rivals. But once he was out the door at Apple, Jobs contacted Gates to try to get talks started again. Gates dispatched his CFO, Gregory Maffei, who met Jobs at his home. Jobs suggested they go for a walk. Grabbing a couple of bottles of mineral water from the fridge, the two took off for a stroll around Palo Alto. Jobs was barefoot. "It was an interesting scene," Maffei recalls. "It was a pretty radical change for the relations between the two companies." The two walked for nearly an hour, through Palo Alto's green university area, as they pounded out the details of a potential deal. Jobs, Maffei says, was "expansive and charming. He said, 'These are things that we care about and that matter.' And that let us cut down the list. We had spent a lot of time with Amelio, and they had a lot of ideas that were nonstarters. Jobs had a lot more ability. He didn't ask for 23,000 terms. He looked at the whole picture, figured about what he needed. And we figured he had the credibility to bring the Apple people around and sell the deal."”
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/13/3239977/apple-and-microsoft-cross-license-agreement-includes-anti-cloning
http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1292505/584.pdf
Apple didn't lose. In fact, Microsoft settled for a huge investment in Apple.
If you follow the supply chain down, you start to hit China pretty quickly: seamless steel tubing, castings, bushings, bearings, more and more seals... Problem is, they are relentlessly climbing up that supply chain to such an extent, that our 'manufacturers' become more 'assemblers' (such as the Google a/v widget). Caltrans is saving millions on a new bridge... by buying most of the subassembly weldments from China.
Just has already happened in the food industry, more and more weasel words and definitions are being applied to US 'manufacturing' to put more money in the pockets of corporations all the while waving their American flags (probably also made in China).
What Picasso (and Jobs) meant by "Great artists steal" was that:
* mediocre people copy designs without understanding them or improving them
* great artists take designs and add enough to them that everybody forgets about the original
Apple is clearly in the second category - 0.1% of the public remembers the Xerox Star, almost no one bought Windows tablets, etc.
I would have to put Samsung in the first category. Look at their 2010 iPhone analysis where most of its recommendations boil down to "iPhone does this better - we should copy it".
Android's category is debatable.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Apple kept innovating? really? I beg to differ. Apple doesn't innovate. they steal and refine. they take the innovation of others and polish the hell out of it. then they sue anyone who has the timerity to "copy" them since their bread and butter is the "look and feel" since Apple has always been about style, not substance. Part of why I've always hated Apple is that I've never felt a technology company should be run by a fucking artist.
Such as selling each other mobile phone contracts, or asking paper or plastic, or would we like to super-size those fries.
Well, you have to start innovating before you can stop, and ripping other people's work and claim yours isn't innovating..
This is all well and good for the consumer, but what about all the poor lawyers who would be out of work if all of this useless litigation were to suddenly cease?
> If our competitors copy us, it is impossible for us to continue moving forward
Fair enough, but that's a patent issue, not a copyright issue. When you try to copyright functionality, you're doing a patent, and it should not be copyrightable.
Exact Apple look, e.g. lines in a window drag bar, Ok (but that mght be better served as a trademark or something.)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
No one cares really except two groups of people.
1) Apple. Because they know they have to demoralize their competition in the US to the point of everyone fearing their wrath. Why? Because apple is a shitty company that makes insanely overpriced products that are inferior to their competition. Apple doesnt make a single product I cant buy from a dozen other companies that do the same thing if not better for a lot less money. Ipad? I can buy multiple android devices that do the same thing, perform better and allow me to have freedom of use for my device for less. Mac? Pffff I can get on newegg and build a pc that is a lot more powerful for a lot less money that uses windows which works with EVERYTHING while mac only works on the small mac market of software and games.Iphone? I can buy a samsung galaxy s3 which is far superior in every way plus android lets ME decide what I want to put on it for same price or less. Ipod? My phone is an ipod and I can buy dozens of devices that do the same thing for a lot less. There is a reason why in everyother country apple doesnt do nearly as well as it does in the US, so they fight cheap in order to keep their foothold lest the commoners finally discover their prices and products suck.
2) Pretentious, mindless, slave to trend zealot apple users. The people who endlessly talk about their apple products for no reason. They cant call their cell phone a cell phone, its a iphone. They cant call their computer a computer, they insist its a mac while spewing crap about how they cant get viruses on it. They just want to feel cool by paying way to much for a product so they can be seen using it and tell people about it. These are the folks who use their ipads at starbucks as they browse facebook hoping people will think they are writing a novel and will fight to the death defending their products with like 2 different arguments.
Other than that no one cares if apple sued samsung. The galaxy s3 is selling like gangbusters, getting great reviews and is a open ended android product. Samsung isnt hurting.
Because someone is selling a product just as good if not better but for a lot cheaper.
Name a single real invention by any company ever. You can't do it because you know that there is no invention which could withstand the reductive scrutiny you heap on Apple's inventions.
It's called "free advertisement"
"we innovated in creating the graphical user interface; Microsoft copied us; if our competitors simply copy us, it's impossible for us to keep innovating."
No it isn't.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Funny how Apple takes credit for the GUI, when it was created by Xerox PARC, and Jobs and Gates were both invited there to see what their engineers were working on. Xerox lost out through lack of vision. But Jobs sure as heck didn't invent it and more than Al Gore invented the Internet.
"...didn't stop innovating at all." Because they never started.
China also knows they hold a large chunk of US debt and therefore we would think twice before causing them too much trouble.
Oh right, he stole that quote from Picasso.
No. He didn't. He misquoted (well, greatly abridged to the point of clouding the actual point) TS Elliot. Many people believe it's a quote from Picasso but they're wrong. It's a TS Elliot quote that, when viewed as a whole, rather than a quick soundbite, makes a tremendous amount of sense.
Specifically:
"One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest."
-- Eliot, T.S.
Apple steals or buys. They are not "gods of innovation".
Schmidt resigned from the Apple board the second Google decide to work on (actually purchased) Android. Not saying he didn't see something before then, but it wasn't like he was spying the way you are implying it happened.
I mistakenly bought an iphone when I intended to buy a galaxy and now I have to use itunes!
I remember one of the selling points of Thief: The dark project was that it had ray-trace lighting. I'm sure any modern machine could run a couple dozen copies at once...of course this means somebody is going to start talking about Scotsman to prove me wrong.
When it comes to the mobile market, iOS doesn't seem all that different in terms of the UI compared to the original iPod Touch/iPhone, and the iPad is still using the same look, so there has been very little further innovation on the UI front. MacOS X may be updated, but again, the UI hasn't changed since it was first released in 2001. If their big concept that their main innovations are in the use of the computer, then they are really slacking.
Compare this to Microsoft, who was far behind MacOS X in many areas back in 2001, and with Windows 7 is actually a bit better in a number of areas of the UI, and Windows 8 UI, for all the complaints about it, at LEAST is an attempt to change how people use the computer, which should be seen as more innovative than anything we have seen in the computer space for a long time. For those who need the reminder, innovation is about something NEW, and many of the things that Apple is so proud of is simply taking the concepts that others have come up with, and then making it look better. From that perspective then, Apple has not been terribly innovative for a long time.
Even the high quality screens in Apple computers shouldn't be seen as really INNOVATIVE, since screen resolution increases should be seen as OBVIOUS...remember the original CGA was quite a bit worse in terms of resolution. Many people have been complaining that we are "stuck" at 1920x1080 for the affordable displays, and higher resolutions have not been aggressively pushed by the computer industry by anyone other than Apple. So, Apple does deserve credit for SOME things, but innovation in terms of user interface improvements is something that Apple is very very resistant to at this point.
Well, Apple seems to care. *shrug*
As for MS, I was learning to code both OSes back in those days, and there were so many data structures in Windows that were identical to those in Mac OS, and I mean down to the individual variable spellings. It was pretty sad.
How is Apple stealing from the open source world for OS X and iOS?
Who did Xerox copy?
Just say no to software patents!!!
We need open hardware platforms for tablets and phones so we can develop our own software and use open source software on them without some
DRM comrade telling us what apps we can have!!!
If you follow the supply chain down, you start to hit China pretty quickly...
If you follow the supply chain you'll hit any country you care to name, including the US. That's what global trade is all about. The product we make on our assembly like has parts from China, Mexico, Japan and the US. Furthermore there are lots of manufacturing needs that are not easily serviced by China, no matter how good their manufacturing prowess. Any production in the US that is done on a Just In Time basis pretty much rules out manufacturing in China. Shipping is expensive and makes lead times very long. You also have exchange rate fluctuations which have a strong impact on the cost of exporting/importing. China imports a lot of items like every big country.
Yes, China is going to be a player - they have 1/5 of the worlds population for crying out loud. They should be a major part of the economy. But the US isn't going to be a third world country just because China finally got their act together. It's just going to be different. Whining about it accomplishes nothing useful.
http://www.ted.com/talks/kirby_ferguson_embrace_the_remix.html The problem with Apple, and many other company's patent wars is that they are trying to fight over ownership of ideas instead of implementation. Coming up with an idea that is simply one step further than every technology it is built upon and then saying "We made this all by ourselves its off limits to anyone else, it's ours now" is total bullshit and it completely disregards the fact that anyone working in a technology field is standing on the shoulders of everyone who came before them. Patent laws work to maintain the current monopolies and do nothing to promote innovation. Even the nature of the question is inherently biased as it frames it in the context of copying from Apply only, as if Apple never did the exact same fucking thing many times previously (like hell Apple invented multi-touch, they didn't even come up with the name).
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
The U.S. may "win" a war with China, but would no longer be a superpower afterwards. You may not even be a middle power, since you won't have your 100 largest cities any more. After your war with China is over, the greatest power on the North American continent will be Mexico.
Your example is badly flawed. "Drinkbox Studios" is surely trade markable, as is their logo, because drinking has nothing per se to do with boxes or video games and a logo is, in any case, a trade mark. Trade mark is a stronger protection than a "design patent" (in Europe a Design Registration).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Dynamite is nitroglycerin mixed with silicon dioxide, it is a minor composition of two well known and understood compounds both of which have been around forever. The critical property of dynamite is that it explodes, but it gets that property entirely from nitroglycerin so I don't see anything innovative about that. Adding in the silica (I assume you aren't claiming that Nobel invented silicon dioxide?) makes it a little more stable and user-friendly--and (of course) allowed Alfred Nobel to market it as something completely new and different. Marketing, that's all Dynamite is.
Come on, this should be easy. Apple has never invented anything as opposed to Google (and other tech companies) who apparently make real inventions every single day. Just name one of them. Just one, one single invention which isn't simply a composition of known technologies.
But there are very few _software_ inventions by companies.
I've worked in telecom programming for 12 years. In that time I think one person on my entire team has done something worth applying for a patent on. The vast majority of the stuff we do is adapting ideas that other people came up with and making them work in our environment, or else doing stuff so blindly obvious that anyone else would do something similar.
Motorola's standard fee for FRAND patents is 2.25% of the finished device price. (This is not unusually high, Qualcomm is 3.5% for example.) What usually happens is that everyone just enters into cross-licensing agreements instead.
Apple doesn't want to cross-license, but claims that the stated fee is too high even though it's what was quoted to everyone else.
Did IBM, Compact, Packard Bell and HP go all crazy over the beige desktop case? Did Motorola sue anyone else who developed a flip phone? Is Microsoft going after APPLE for copying their Courier? NO! Why? Because it's not the product but the form factor of the product. Get over it. Move on.
Lightbulb: The first incandescent light bulb was mearly an eletric battery connected to a platinum strip (Humphry Davy in 1802); Davy didn't invent the eletric battery and he certainly didn't invent platinum and he didn't invent wires. There is also some prior art on creating light using electricity (ever seen lightning?). The light bulb is probably the worst example of an *true* invention because its entire story is one of incremental refinement throughout the course of hundreds of years by dozens of different individuals.
Steam power locomotives: Steam engines existed well before anyone took the fairly obvious step of putting one on a set of wheels (and, btw, the wheel existed well before that)--I don't see how combining those two elements could possibly rise to the level of being called an "invention".
The number 0: Is there a patent on that?
Fire: Really, who invented fire? Lightning hits a tree and the person who witnessed it invented something? really!?!?
=======
Why is this sooo difficult? Apple is consistently chastised for not "inventing" anything, but merely combining or refining existing technologies. By implication, there are thousands of truley unique inventions from all across history, real inventions which are not merely a composition or refinement of existing technologies. So my challenge is simple: Name one.
In particular, name one that isn't just a composition or refinement of existing technologies.
About a year ago, I wrote an article about Steve Jobs' famous quote and, given that I've seen it raised several times in this thread, I feel it's worth reposting because it's just as valid now as it was then. So, here you go.
-----
Of late, with all the Apple vs Google geek drama boiling over, a quote by Steve Jobs is often thrown about in an effort to make Apple/Steve look bad.
"Good artists copy; great artists steal."
Now, obviously, this quote is thrown about in an effort to make Apple and/or Steve look bad and imply that they ripped off ideas from others. Well, the problem is the quote is actually a misquote which thus clouds the point, which is rare for someone of Steve's speaking elegance. Most people who know it's a misquote believe he's misquoting Picasso but the truth is he's misquoted TS Elliot. The actual quote is:
"One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest."
Now, when you compare Steve's misquote and TS Elliot's actual quote, you see they actually say basically the same thing but TS Elliot's full quote obviously puts the whole thing into context so the point is understood.
And I agree with it.
I have long believed that there are no more original ideas, just interesting takes on old ideas.
Now, as with Steve's misquote, when expressed that simply, my point can get lost and often has led to people disagreeing with me, strongly. But my point is this - as we grow up, we are exposed to extensive amounts of information that becomes the background noise of our creative processes. As we write, paint, sculpt, compose, and otherwise create, we are influenced, in one way or another, by everything we've seen and heard up until that point. Sometimes the inspiration is heavy and obvious and other times it's subtle and we aren't even aware of it. But we're always influenced by what we've seen up until that point of creation. And good creators put an interesting spin or twist on their inspirations and come up with something that seems and feels new and original. But, at the end of the day, there are no more original ideas, only interesting takes on old ideas.
While many toss around Steve's misquote in the hopes of painting him and Apple in a bad light, they fail to realize that, though he over-simplified a complex issue, he's right. As was TS Elliot before him. Great creators are inspired by what has come before them; they transform and mold and adapt their creation until its something new and wonderful while other creators simply copy without any of the finesse, simply regurgitating what came before.
And, when viewed in the context of Apple, it is clearly relevant. Apple is often touted as being innovative and original by some while others quickly point out that they're just doing what others have done before them. And you know what, both sides are right, which shows that Apple is a "good poet" - they take something and make it into something better, or at least different. They weld the theft into a whole of feeling which is unique. Apple wasn't the first to market with a graphic UI, but they transformed the computer market with Mac OS; Apple wasn't the first to market with an MP3 music player, but they transformed the market with the iPod; Apple wasn't the first to market with a smartphone, but they transformed the market with the iPhone; Apple wasn't the first to market with an ultralight laptop, but they've transformed the market with the Macbook Air; Apple wasn't the first to market with a tablet PC, but they've transformed the market with the iPad. The
Are patently getting out of hand. If the situation had been like this a century ago we would only have one car manufacturer, and likely only one airplane manufacturer. How would that have helped innovation ?
Recognizing the value in someone else's product and incorporating it in your product is the epitome of innovation.
Just because one portion of your product was licensed from another company certainly doesn't mean your product is not innovative. If every portion of a product had to be completely new to be regarded as innovation then the only personal computer that could possibly fit that description is the Altair 8080.
Apple is not well known for innovation.
Apple is known for making very good use of ideas, combining them in new ways, persuading people that already existing ideas were actually invented by them and then suing other people because they might dare to compete with them in the supposed "free market".
Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFeC25BM9E0 for a better explanation.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
More like they didn't sue them because they don't have significant market share.
They don't give back at all. KHTML (as opensource) was completely ruined by Apple.
Other than that, nobody should care. Copying is how humanity has progressed over history.
So called "intellectual property" is an oxymoron, it is not compatible with either real private property or free markets, while benefiting just a few at the expense of everyone else.
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
As Android started to look more like iOS, Jobs was starting to believe that it wasn't a coincidence.
and how exactly do they look the same? they both have a grid of icons for launching applications. hey, i have been arranging application icons in grids on my desktop computer since 1994. i should be suing.
really, what people don't get it is that both iOS and Android are minimalist UIs. they really offer very little except a way to start an app, a lock screen, and a few settings screens.
the reason why they have not sued MS or RIM is because they are taking on thing at a time. companies don't initiate 10 parallel identical lawsuits. they execute one, and depending on the outcome, decide how to proceed on the others.
you would rather stipulate that noone has ever invented anything. Well played.
James Burke is that you?
Apple does.
However, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so Apple should be pleased that somebody cares enough about their shit to imitate it. Ungrateful bastards...
That is EXACTLY what I'm saying. I'm serious.
and can now find a better link to it for future reference. I'd use the parent message, but somehow an Anonymous Coward doesn't inspire confidence...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Apple doesn't innovate they take something someone else innovated and create a great marketing campaign to promote it.
How can you even justify Samsung is counterfeiting let alone copying Apply @ all. If anything Samsung has patents on phones that were released 2 years prior to the first iphone and the Iphone copied samsungs model ... including the icon grid ... this is all about Apple trying to screw the real innovators and change/reform patent law's to suit their situation (late player to the game trying to invalidate their predecessors patent's so they can steal them and later sue another player who came late to the mobile phone game claiming the patents belong to them. Pure B/S. And Apple and its fan's are smoking crack if they believe otherwise)
Can we expect anything less from the communists at harvard, they dont believe in private property after all.
The train is a good example of that. The Brits invented trains and other countries copied it. Now the UK rail network is inferior to other rail networks elsewhere.
Apples & Samsungs lawyers at a guess.
Patent laws have seriously past their useful life and are now a means to keep the lawyers fed.
When you can patent rubbing your finger across something then there is no hope.
Wolja Future Tombstone: Shit happened then I died
Not me.
You know why Apple hasn't sued MS for Metro or RIM of BBOS 7?
Is it because they don't represent a real threat to their mobile market share?
Um. Schmidt resigned from the Apple board in 2009, 2 years after iPhone was launched. Google purchased Android in 2005. I would say 4 years is not "the second" after Google bought Android.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I stand corrected. Yeah, I looked it up myself, unfortunately after I posted that. That was not how I remembered it happening. But my memory was faulty. He actually resigned when Google started working on ChromeOS. But you see if you read that article that Jobs didn't consider Schmidt a spy. It was just that Schmidt had to dismiss himself from so much of the board meetings where there was conflict of interest that there was no point in having him on the board. Thus it seems he was not "given advanced early looks at the iPhone" since he did not participate in those meetings. So do you stand corrected on that?