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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
... 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/
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.
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
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.
What about the high-capacity battery? Did you figure that into your 6 dollars?
http://www.amazon.com/capacity-portable-External-Motorola-Blackberry/dp/B008S4QR2U/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1356098608&sr=8-13&keywords=high+capacity+battery
Add about $15 for the battery.
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
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.
Why can't they use their technology for other phones?
did you forget to take your meds?
"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.
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."
"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.
Way to link to something just under 1/5th the capacity and with inferior electronics that pushes out a maximum 1amp, you know, a little under half what's required to charge the iPad at regular charging speed. But yeah, it's cheaper.
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.
Way to link to something just under 1/5th the capacity and with inferior electronics that pushes out a maximum 1amp, you know, a little under half what's required to charge the iPad at regular charging speed. But yeah, it's cheaper.
That's my point. There are much cheaper products that do "well enough" what this very expensive ($150) device does. It's no different to Apple vs PC (expensive vs cheaper for similar tasks) or Mercedes vs Ford, but the crucial difference is that market research has been done in the latter cases.
In the former case, he overpromised on something he had no guarantee he could deliver, at a high price, without checking with Apple first. He assumed that Apple would say yes. A dangerous thing to assume with Apple who are not known for their easygoing nature with third party vendors.
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.
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 don't see how what you linked to was well enough. It doesn't have enough juice to charge an iPad, and has a weak enough output to charge at half the speed on top of that. It also can't charge more than one device at a time, and has questionable recharge time for it's own batteries. For many uses, including mine, it's not NEARLY well enough. I travel with enough supplies to charge two iPads via wall power at full speed, and enough battery juice to charge one of them outright off battery. Two AA batteries really doesn't do much of anything for me.
This is why DIN rocks. Unfortunately, car makers seem to be moving away from it more and more.
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
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.
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.
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"