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Apple Kills a Kickstarter Project - Updated
Nerdfest writes "Venturebeat is reporting that a successfully funded Kickstarter project for a portable phone charger that works with both Apple and Android devices has been canceled because Apple wouldn't let the creators license its Lightning connector. Quoting: 'Edison Junior, the technology and design lab behind the POP portable power station, is returning the full $139,170 in funding it received from Kickstarter backers to develop the device. Unfortunately, Apple has refused to give the project permission to license the Lightning charger in a device that includes multiple charging options. ... "We didn’t get a yes or a no up front," Siminoff said. "But as we kept going back and forth it was clear that it was getting harder. Then, when we saw that they weren’t even going to allow a Lightning connector and a 30-pin connector together, we knew it was over." He also said that, while Apple is a private company and can do whatever it wishes, it should watch out. "When you do things that are bad for the customer I think it will be bad for them.”''"
Update: 12/21 22:16 GMT by S : Apple has relented. A spokesman for the company told Ars, "Our technical specifications provide clear guidelines for developing accessories and they are available to MFi licensees for free. We support accessories that integrate USB and Lightning connectors, but there were technical issues that prevented accessories from integrating 30-pin and Lightning connectors so our guidelines did not allow this. We have been working to resolve this and have updated our guidelines to allow accessories to integrate both 30-pin and Lightning connectors to support charging."
Dear Apple
Fuck you!
Yours sincerely
The sane people on the planet
Apple takes another one out !!
... for the customer I think it will be bad for them
LOL!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/08/21/apple-now-most-valuable-company-in-history/
Haven't we been through this already with third party console controllers?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there going to be some sort of legislature dictating that cell phone makers use a universal charging standard by this point? Everyone else has managed micro usb, why is it so hard for apple?
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
I had presumed that Apple wanted to have tight control over the lightening connector - that is to say, they wanted to maximize their profit - but geesh!
Way to act like Veruca Salt!
Walled garden. That is all.
I can buy all 3 of these connectors and a multi purpose USB/AC block for about 6 dollars from Amazon. It seems like a dim witted project from the get-go.
Must follow The Leader.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_The_Simpsons#Movementarians
Apple is hell-bent to keep its customers by the balls, the customers develop feelings for the entity... Stockholm syndrome anyone?
Tomorrow is another day...
Apple isn't a private company. It is subject to its shareholders. Though I suppose it is private in the "private vs. government" sense...
They have always gone the route of killing off anything that I, personally, might find useful to purchase. Looks like they are keeping the streak alive.
Since just about everything uses USB cables these days, anyhow, why is anyone bothering with designing chargers targeted towards a specific device or family of devices? Just put a USB A receptacle on there, and call it done! Let the licensing be taken care of by those who make cables.
Oh, and one thing I'm NOT confused about is Apple's strategy....screw you, Apple. I'm sick of paying for products that you need to have an apple computer to program for... for an OS that only runs on your hardware, despite having the ability to run just about anywhere ... for products that don't have user-serviceable batteries...and for your stupid, non-compliant connectors. I bought my last apple product 5 years ago, and I haven't looked back.
just saying
I cannot believe they even tried.
Apple is not another cell phone company. It is the only cell phone company. Actually, they do not even make cell phones, they don't even make iPhones, they make THE iPhone, which is a completely different product aimed at a completely different market not to be confused with the ordinary communication devices made by other companies.
Here you have an article where no statement was included from Apple including the purported response this company got. Then the CEO goes on to call Apple assholes. Who knows what really happened.
I for one wouldn't license my IP to someone who calls me an asshole.
...I needed yet another reason not to ever buy an Apple product. Still... Thanks, Apple, for solidifying my resolve completely.
Hey look, Apple is being Apple. How shocking.
I fail to see how or why this Kickstarter project could possibly need a license from Apple for any of this to work. They could build it with a bunch of USB slots and toss in a disclaimer: "cables not included." There, problem solved.
Or am I missing something obvious?
Because in the USA, at least, you can't patent an interface. You can patent all sorts of other stuff, but interface patents are one of the few things you can't patent? That's why AMD and Compaq were able to waltz in and kick IBM's and Intel's ass when it came to pin-socket compatible PC's.
They took money for a product they didn't know if they could build, then when it turns out they couldn't, instead of slightly modifying the design by including a female USB port, they set customers up with accounts on their Kickstarter competitor to refund them. This looks pretty much like they changed their mind about building it if favour of pivoting their business to go into crowd funding, and decided to use Apple hate to grab users and publicity.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
My KS project was shut down by the Russian Gov't. All I wanted to do was duplicate an ICBM engine and put a warhead on it. But they said their warheads are patented and I couldn't have the designs.
Yeah, in a Utopian World good deeds would be rewarded, bad folks would be remorseful while heartily accepting their punishment, and there would be a benevolent god rewarding life's protagonists with eternal life. As Alan Jackson has been known to croon, "Here In The Real World", the most important predictor of future business success in an utter lack of conscience.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Forget the Maps debacle, in my opinion it's the Lightning connector that will ultimately do more damage.
And it's not the connector's technical design -- I think it works pretty slick and is a definite improvement mechanically over the 30 pin connector and superior to MicroUSB as well.
It's the overall handling of Lightning that I think is an issue. First of all, shouldn't Lightning have been on the iPad 3 first? IMHO, the iPads are slightly less connector-centric and a release on iPad would have given accessory developers enough lead time to get products designed and through Apple's approval process in time for actual accessories and adapters to be available at iPhone 5 launch. As far as I know, there are very few Lightning accessories available right now -- some car chargers (who hasn't switched to a USB connector by now?) and maybe a Bose dock, but not much else.
The other thing is -- why is Apple being so difficult with device approvals? One thing Apple had going for it was a kind of network effect, where one of things that made iPhone/iPad appealing was a broad range of accessories available for it. By making accessory development difficult, they hurt innovation, which means less stuff, and in theory the Lightning connector should make for innovative products because of its digital nature.
IMHO this is really what will hurt Apple, not Maps, which will be good enough for most people as-is (it's always worked well for me), as well as get better over time.
Yes! It totally makes sense!
1. Get $140k in Kickstarter funding
2. Give it all back, and give up on plan
3. Profit!
Why didn't I think of that! Getting a bunch of money and giving it back and not going forward with a business plan totally sounds like the best way to be successful! What an ingenious plot!
Why can't they use their technology for other phones?
did you forget to take your meds?
"I for one wouldn't license my IP to someone who calls me an asshole."
Business is business, you don't let your personal feelings get in the way.
Apple's license for that connector means it can't be included with any other connection, not even an old Apple one. You might not believe it, but do you recall their USB connector? the one that needed a resistor, the patented one they used to prevent third party chargers working? They have lots of form here.
Bend over Apple fanboy, Jobs is dead and Tim Cook has no new ideas, so get ready to pay ever more for those power cables. They'll even Taser you if you want buy several of them! Hey, nothing gives a cable extra cach-e than Tasering customers who dare to buy 2 of them!
IMHO, their decision to drop the Apple connector, return the cash and seek funding for one that excludes Apple is the right way forward. Apple are really losing market share with each month and stuff like this just makes that faster. Good riddence to bad scum.
"When you do things that are bad for the customer I think it will be bad for them.”
Oh how I wish this was true, so many companies (apple included) wouldn't be in business anymore if this was the case.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
People like to go around chanting "We're #1!"
Soon the winner-takes-all market dynamics turns #1 into an 800lb gorilla, which does what gorillas do, until their once-proud fan base begins to feel the grip tighten to eye-popping intensity, whereupon the parade degenerates into a comic spectacle from the Ministry of Silly Walks.
The parade veterans dress in uncool loose shorts forever after, and express a lot less enthusiasm about chanting "We're #1!" but every generation has to learn for itself, so the cycle repeats.
I've come to realize that loyalty is a tricky business. If one puts any stock in the maxim that absolute power corrupts absolutely, it's hard not to view loyalty as sowing the seeds of destruction. I'm pretty happy in most markets if I can align myself with a viable #2, and almost ecstatic if I can align myself with a viable #3 (with any hope of midterm survival). In the early days of ATI/Nvidia I tended to buy Matrox. Matrox had fewer frames, but sharper pixels. Of course, that couldn't last.
I used to support AMD for the same reason. But now we have AMD Opteron 3200 Series [slashcode mdash fuckup] Where did they go?. You can't even read an AMD press release with any confidence the product exists. There are limits to rooting for the underdog. I continue to prefer OpenCL even through CUDA probably has an edge in stability. Whatever happens to AMD, I hope OpenCL doesn't end up owned by Oracle.
Chrome is now better than FF for many tasks. But I continue to use FF because the day FF dies off, Chrome will immediately begin to suck donkey balls where it suits Google. Google+ will be bundled into the browser experience in much the same way the IE was bundled into Windows. No, your honour, we can't remove Google+. It's a design pillar.
Samsung so far seems to have relative immunity to whatever got into the Sony water supply. Phones will remain a contested space for a while yet. The Koreans as a culture seem less attracted to DRM and more attracted to price fixing.
We'd all be a lot better off with less bandwagon effect. When I imagine the movie made about Jobs in the style of Gandhi, my version would probably begin with the line "As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be the band leader."
Yes, fearing Apple's destructiveness toward the world makes sense. But what you said directs attention away from the fact that Apple makes money partly by making products people want, and partly by being destructive toward those people.
Apple's current downward slide is good for the world, because it tends to limit Apple's hostility. What will stop Apple from becoming less and less relevant? The one-time opportunities to make a well-designed music player and a more sophisticated cell phone have come and gone.
More detail: It should not be possible to get a patent on a connector!!! All connectors and other standard ways of doing things like file system organizations must be in the public domain. Otherwise there are numerous opportunities for abuse.
Apple does to much to force you to constantly point in their direction. The fact that Apple puts syncing downloaded apps ahead of syncing Outlook contacts, and syncing some crappy unneeded app can hang your phone and iTunes for any amount of time shows me that they are not concerned with me as a user. The iPhone 4 is my FIRST and now LAST Apple product. Period.
I'm not even going to go down the patent road, and the fact all apple products are derived from other sources of inspiration, such as 60's Braun products, http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to-apples-future.
Apple does to much to force you to constantly point in their direction. The fact that Apple puts syncing downloaded apps ahead of syncing Outlook contacts, and syncing some crappy unneeded app can hang your phone and iTunes for any amount of time shows me that they are not concerned with me as a user. The iPhone 4 is my FIRST and now LAST Apple product. Period. I'm not even going to go down the patent road, and the fact all apple products are derived from other sources of inspiration, such as 60's Braun products, http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to-apples-future.
I thought in the case of a return, the credit card company gave the 3% back to the store.
(In other words, reversed the WHOLE transaction.)
Seems like this would apply here.
"When you do things that are bad for the customer I think it will be bad for them."
You've got to admit, this guy is funny. It's like he's totally unfamiliar with Apple.
Soon apple will have its own USB and replace the 1/4 audio with some strange ass connector .....
A communications professor of mine got great humor out of the various ad campaigns that tell you to "be different by joining our crowd"
Dr Pepper
Apple
Every Single Four Wheel Drive car commercial
However, that's not to say that Apple hasn't built products that are powerful, simple, and elegant. Too many consumer products are a bucket of cool features poured into a plastic case.
Apple does an awesome job of leveraging their industrial design, their manufacturing clout, their IP (patents) and their defacto standards.
However, the most unlikely outcome is for them to remain on top forever. In 2011, they had $108 billion in revenue. To make Wall Street happy, let's assume that they need 5% yearly revenue growth. They would need to add $5.4 billion in *NEW* revenue in 2012, then $5.7 billion in 2013, etc. In 2013, they will need to add additional revenue equal to the entire yearly revenue of the Starwood Hotel chain, Live Nation, or Pacific Life ... just to keep Wall Street happy and continue to be a "growth company."
All those ipad docks and BMWs with Apple connectors are going to look so stupid in 3 years. Wireless is the future.
Wireless charging, bluetooth media. Most cars will do bluetooth for audio, both telephone and songs. Standards are coming for the wireless chargers, and car manufacturers are adopting them.
I own a 5 year old Toyota with sat nav and bluetooth. To me the satnav is outdated, my phone does things better (nicer maps, more zoom levels, etc). This car doesn't have the A2DP in the bluetooth, so it will only copy address book and telephone calls. We update our phones every 1.5-5 years, but cars last longer.
In the home, USB outlets are becoming more common. I have one, and want a couple more. But I am holding off, waiting for the charging pads to be more common.
"When you do things that are bad for the customer I think it will be bad for them.”
LOL, I can tell this guy isn't swayed by things like reality or evidence. When has fucking customers ever turned out badly for a company? Okay, yeah, every now and then it happens, but way way over 99% of products and companies at any given time are proactively going out of their way to fuck customers for nothing but the fun of it.
Dear Apple,
Fuck You!
Yours Sincerely,
The people who keep giving money to Apple, even after they claim to be angry.
The public is so angry at Apple, that they will severely punish Apple by suffocating them in a torrent of money. Let this vicious brutality be a lesson to others who may be contemplating evil.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
My partner and I came up with a device that allows you to open a garage door with a smartphone. Just a box with a relay and a Bluetooth radio. When I started looking into whether or not we could do this for iPhone I found apples "Made for iPod" program...their hardware licensing scheme.
The first thing they asked for was our attorney's contact information.
A quick search showed me that it was going to cost in the ballpark of $20,000 to deal with Apple's bullshit. So that didn't happen.
Why cant the company redesign the device to ship with no cables but just usb ports and for people to attach their own cables to it?
The charger needs to authenticate with the phone to achieve fast charge, so you *can* plug it into your kindle charger... but for slow charge only. This is exactly the same as their secret resistor code in chargers thing of the past, just much harder to figure out.
Actually. Apple hasn't finished negotiations with this inventor. They sat down with him to discuss licensing options and before they could say the word "royalties" he immediately spazzed and decided to refund his contributors. There's an agenda behind this of course, he's trying to get people to pay attention to his kickstarter-clone website. Conspiracy theory: He created his infringing product on kickstarter on purpose with the ultimate goal of attracting projects to his actual goal.
So, Apple didn't actually kill anything here. He's a drama queen with a not-so-hidden agenda. As the saying go any publicity is good publicity. We'll see if it works out for him. To be honest, if I were to start a project I'd start it on Kickstarter and not his site, because kickstarter sends you the whole funding after funding ends, whereas he selfishly keeps 2/3 of it. You get the second 1/3 after you complete a prototype to begin mass production, which might not be enough. And, then you get the remaining 1/3 after that to help with marketing or something. Now he tries to argue he's doing it for the customers to ensure projects ship, but really he's just trying to get away with holding a majority of the capital himself forever. And, if you're stupid enough to put your project on his site and he deems that you're unfit to deliver your product because say maybe your date slipped, he can indefinitely withhold a majority of your funding. It's criminal and he should go straight to hell for it. That's why I haven't mentioned his site's name in this post. Just thought you should all know.
Because it's so much easier to to fumble with your smartphone, launching an app, waiting for the bluetooth to connect, if it's within range, and finally being able to open the garage door (provided you did not have to remove the gloves first) than to just hit the switch strategically placed on the sun visor of your car ...
It's called USB.
K.I.S.S.
| "When you do things that are bad for the customer I think it will be bad for them.”''"
What? Whoever said that doesn't know history. Apple has been doing things that are bad for consumers their entire history. As far as Apple is concerned their motto has always been that you will do it the Apple way or you won't do it at all.
If they would have offered that any and all detected Android devices would be automatically bricked, I'm sure Apple would have allowed Lightning connectivity.
Seriously Apple does your douchiness know any bounds?
Apple has consistently proven they don't give a crap about their customers or anyone else. Look at the FCPX debacle, they don't like to admit even to their loyal customers that their "vision" may be wrong. It's taken a year and now they are starting to put back the features that their visionary team said nobody wanted. They have all the answers, just ask anyone who pays the "Apple Tax" on every product they make. You can't even reason with them. No one hears you at that company. You can take the proprietary connector and proprietary screws and shove them up their ass. The Apple ][ was an open platform where the user could add components like memory and special function cards themselves. Then the jack-booted genius says let's make the Macintosh and let's seal it up so only authorized Apple stores can open them or do a simple thing like add ram which most any other computer user can do in minutes themselves. When you have choices the prices reflect the market, when you only have one source and it's Apple you have GREED. I was just sent a iPhone application via a developer to check out (Ok I do have an iPhone 5) Turns out it fixes a problem that was introduced with the iPhone 5. I checked it out and it fixes it perfectly and I told them that. Now they tell me that it was in review for 3 months and then rejected because it cast a light on a Apple flaw they they refuse to admit. They app was Free, but the customers with iPhone 5's will never get a chance to get the fix. If Apple can't control it then they try and kill it or suck the last dime out of them.
I've already purchased several 3rd party Lightning cables that work well for less than $10. I know there are some awful ones out there, but the ones I bought are pretty good. This project could have just bundled those cables, which probably cost less than $6 in bulk.
As usual, there are a bunch of people spazzing about Apple... and perfectly willing to cozy up to a number of different megacorps that behave just as badly or oftentimes even worse. A number of these megacorps have more questionable patent practices, proprietary connectors, labor practices, environmental policies, and so forth. That's before you get to the damning emails in the Samsung trial after the illegal purging of a slew of relevant evidence. Sigh. I guess as long as you believe your favorite megacorp is better, than so be it, but you are likely just kidding yourself in an exercise in self validation for the product choice you made.
BTW, both mini-usb and micro-usb are very failure prone and do not provide enough charging current. Apple has never been afraid to stake new ground when they see a technical or user advantage.
Apple doesn't pay dividends, it just gets richer. Eventually Apple we start to shrink, if it hasn't already. Then whoever put money in will lose it all.
I can't tell if you think Apple or the campaign were scamming.
However, I must agree - why doesn't Apple just use USB to charge everything?
Why use a proprietary 30-pin (or {whatever}-pin connector? Because Apple wants to make a proprietary, patented, connector that cannot be copied to get $30 extra from every sale made. That's why.
If you buy Apple-anything, you deserve to be screwed over. There is a price for "just working" things - between 30% and 200% more than what the competition charges.
I hope a few people here, especially Apple LOVERS, have read the gizmodo article about slime and theft in Apple retail stores.
If you are a pretty girl, be very afraid if you ever take your Apple product into any Apple store to be worked on. Seems those photo albumns are cloned ASAP and shared.
I'm not saying that every other computer store doesn't do the same thing. I'm just saying that we expect more from Apple - they are "perfect" right?
Remember when Amdahl made computers that were "plug-compatible" with IBM mainframes? As I recall, any Amdahl component was a drop-in replacement for the equivalent IBM component.
What the hell has happened to patent laws (or corporate patent strategies?) that you can't even build a damn power connector without running afoul of some licensing issue? I agree with the parent: no patents on connectors! How does it "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" if nobody can independently build a device to connect to yours?
This is not the only project to have licensing issues with Apple over the Lightning/30-pin connector. This project has had to change drastically over what it was initially...all to please the mighty Apple Beast. iExpander for iPhone 5 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/108290897/iexpander-an-expansion-device-for-your-iphone-4-an
I have learned in the past how shitty apple can be. Like the power mac g5 could not boot from a usb drive. until one day I discovered it could.
After the firewire drive I bought broke.
Fuck them.
Because it's so much easier to to fumble with your smartphone, launching an app, waiting for the bluetooth to connect, if it's within range, and finally being able to open the garage door (provided you did not have to remove the gloves first) than to just hit the switch strategically placed on the sun visor of your car ...
Are you telling me you never wanted to open your garage door from the outside when you were NOT in your car? I'd love you have something like that as an option. If the OP would make something like this for Android I'd buy it in a second.
My partner and I came up with a device that allows you to open a garage door with a smartphone. Just a box with a relay and a Bluetooth radio. When I started looking into whether or not we could do this for iPhone I found apples "Made for iPod" program...their hardware licensing scheme.
The first thing they asked for was our attorney's contact information.
A quick search showed me that it was going to cost in the ballpark of $20,000 to deal with Apple's bullshit. So that didn't happen.
Have you considered making this for Android? I'd jump on it right away.
I put a gun to my head and called up Apple and told them to restructure their 3rd party accessory program to my liking. When they said no, I pulled the trigger and now I am dead. Apple killed me.
Sorry, didn't want to spam, but www.hiqautomation.com. We did build one for Android and it works pretty well. And like one of you said...most our beta testers ended up using it when they were not in their car...usually out working on the lawn or something. One guy we have testing told me about the time his wife got locked out of the house but she didn't have an android phone, alas! :-)
We're doing a release in about 2 months...ordering the parts for the first fifty units just after xmas.
There is certainly more to this story than is being told so far. I'd like to see this company share their communications with Apple and let customers make up their own mind.
They had at least two options available for this specific problem:
1) Ship with 30 pin dock connector, and let users use an adaptor (which is readily available).
2) Rather than put a bunch of proprietary connectors on it, why not just have USB ports and let users charge whatever the hell they want, via whatever cable they want? If I were buying this, I'd prefer that anyway.
Finally, what kind of businessman says "I think they are being a bunch of assholes" about a company they are trying to negotiate with? Extremely unprofessional. If I were in Apples shoes, I would pretty much write them off for all future business - some relationships are simply not worth the problems they bring.
This all makes me wonder if this isn't just a scapegoat for aborting the project.
Branded USB charging devices as a project, pushing price as a market edge, when by the time you get one the other devices they are talking down will be cheaper and by then even cheaper and better devices will be out.
Someone please create a kickstarter to get wireless charging into common commercial table tops or coasters easily.
Also Bluetooth connects damn fast these days. I pretty much never turn it off, so being able to just hit an app launcher that would connect and open could be handled in about a second - which would be incredibly useful.
Being a habitual asshole is not good for business.
I must admit that I've not actually picked up an Apple phone for ... well, I'm not sure if I've ever picked up an Apple phone. Do they have any interesting characteristics?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
We already have universal mini-USB adapters, this is STANDART for any phones, Windows Phones, Android devices, Blackberries, etc (all competitors working for the better)... Then all we need is a plug into the wall.
Only Apple devices don't use standart technologies, so that means you should not support Apple the outcast in their eco-prison.
Apple is the only reason this thing is built in the first place, because only Apple devices don't use standart technologies.
This is SO understandable that this thing could not be built without Apple connectors, the fact that Apple don't use standart technologies is the only reason we would need that. But the problem can be solve only if you stop buying Apple stuff.
Same with the advent of QI technology, a standart for wireless charging - which Apple do not take part.
So my conclusion is : If you support a fragmented world = buy Apple products. If you support a unified world = buy something else.
When you eat, is your dish a wheelbarrow, your fork a pitchfork, & spoon a shovel or what http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3345911&cid=42414637 ? Does your bed use chevy truck coil springs and struts to hold your fat ass off the floor too? Hahahaha. No wonder you said this "Oh... to eat pizza again..." by erroneus (253617) on Saturday December 22, @05:20PM (#42371769) from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3335159&cid=42371769 you disgustingly fat hog!
Erroneus/john b wilcox: When you eat, is your dish a wheelbarrow, your fork a pitchfork, and spoon a shovel or what http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3345911&cid=42414637 ? Does your bed use chevy truck coil springs and struts to hold your fat ass off the floor too? Hahahaha. No wonder you said this "Oh... to eat pizza again..." by erroneus (253617) on Saturday December 22, @05:20PM (#42371769) from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3335159&cid=42371769 you disgustingly fat hog.