I can't see very well in the graphic because the text is hard to read, but it looks like most (if not all) of the pre-iPhone touchscreen phones were mockups and demos. Seems unfair to compare prototypes to production models.
Why do you think that's unfair? The question is whether Apple was the first one to think of this design. If others had mockups and demos that where similar, Apple was obviously not the first one.
so, because apple is a profitable and successful company, they deserve to get shaken down by patent holders who are skirting the law.
No. Because Apple has been using patented technology for years they are expected to pay for it.
It's not Motorolas fault if Apple was using patented technology and didn't put some money from the profits on the bank to pay for using these patents later on.
No. Because Apple does not have a Monopoly or near Monopoly in a market segment. ("iPhones" and "iPads" are not a market segment, "smartphones" and "tablets" are.)
Microsoft wasn't fined for pushing IE, but for leveraging Windows' position as a Monopoly tu push IE.
Microsoft had a binding contract with the EU comission, and they broke it. If they hadn't, the browser ballot would bee a thing of the past in a few months and nobody would care about it anymore.
But Microsoft fucked up, and now they have to face the music for breaking a contract.
Microsoft was found in violation of monopoly laws because they have a near monopoly on desktop OS' and abused that position.
As much as I dislike Apples business practices: They have neither a (near) monoply on the phone market nor the tablet market. They are a very big player in both, but there is actual competition.
They take the content for free then charge money for it (indirectly through advertising), giving nothing back to the source.
Wrong. They direct millions and millions of people to the websites of those publishers. And the publishers want those hits. Otherwise they could easily stop Google from doing so by using the robots.txt.
What actually happens is that the publishers want BOTH: Google redirecting people to their sites and getting money from Google for doing so.
Put a swastika, or even anything resembling a swastika, up publicly in Germany and you'll be arrested. Google/Twitter/whoever is merely following the law here.
Borderline untrue. Being German I can tell from own experience that it depends on context. In our school books, museums, TV (documentaries as well as entertainment) you can find swastikas and other Nazi symbols.
The English Wikipedia entry on swastikas unfortunately doesn't go into details, the German entry for Hakenkreuz (use Google translate) explains that education, art, documentations, research and a few more field are excempt from the prohibition.
It is simply not right that one must know the laws of an artibray number of other countries even if you've never visited them.
Hacking into systems you don't have official access to is illegal in the UK just as much as it is in the US. So he didn't need to know the laws of another country to know that what he did was illegal.
And that he wasn't in the US when he commited a crime in the US is a weak argument too. If you stand on the French-German border on the French side and I on the German side and I shoot you, wouldn't I have commited a crime in France (as well as in Germany, of course)?
Secondly, the guy has a mental condition.
He has Asperger's Syndrome. That doesn't stop him from knowing right from wrong or how laws work.
If sensitive systems were that insecure, then that amount of fixing/upgrading/replacing was already required whether or not they successfully detected an intrusion.
So if I break into your house because you have crappy locks it's not that bad? Also, the costs probably are not only about upgrading the security system but also analysing what data he accessed and whether he changed anything, copied any codes that need to be changed etc.
With Apple and Google being to other big (or coming) players in this market you don't need to worry to much about Amazon succeding.
For Amazon selling books is a main part of their business. So they can not sell books below price for too long. For Apple and Google selling books is just one small part of their portfolio. They could survive a lot longer subsidising book sales then Amazon could.
This money doesn't come from Amazon. It's from the publishing houses that colluded on price issues following Apples demand. Amazon is just delivering the settlement money to its customers as Amazon knows who bought what.
On average, you drive longer distances in cars then on a bike, so the stats may be true and yet you don't hear about that many deaths while cycling. Especially if less people use a bike than a car.
Samsung could have made their tablet look very different than the iPad. Just look at the Nook Color, Nokia's N810, or the many mock-ups of a Nokia Tablet that look like an oversized Nokia Lumia 900 (which I think looks good).
So "copy somebody else, just not Apple"? The question is not whether it would have been possible to design a device that looks completely different from Apples products, but whether Apple can claim ownership to design principles that have been around before and that are (one) logical solution for a given problem.
Anyway, the Samsung Galaxy Tablet and the iPad are almost indistinguishable from each other when the power is off.
Except for the logo, the different form factor and all the other little differences, that create a completely different picture.
Actually, I belive this one might be the exception. So many mayor players major playes have participated and are standing behing Opus, I can easily see this becoming the dominant codec for loosy audio
Apple doesn't seem to be behind it. So they will likely try to block Opus being used.
If they have some patents that cover Opus, on the other hand, they might be willing to start an OPUS-LA and cash in.
I would say being patent and license free (aka it can be incorporated into a GPL'd application) would be pretty far down the list
You seem to miss the fact that licence costs are alse important for any commercial program that is suppost do encode data using the codec, as it is important for manufacturers of devices that are expected to use the codec. If a company has to pay licence fees for each smartphone or tablet it builds a new format will not take off. If it is free adoption is only a matter of programming to include the codec in the own product.
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I can't see very well in the graphic because the text is hard to read, but it looks like most (if not all) of the pre-iPhone touchscreen phones were mockups and demos. Seems unfair to compare prototypes to production models.
Why do you think that's unfair?
The question is whether Apple was the first one to think of this design.
If others had mockups and demos that where similar, Apple was obviously not the first one.
so, because apple is a profitable and successful company, they deserve to get shaken down by patent holders who are skirting the law.
No.
Because Apple has been using patented technology for years they are expected to pay for it.
It's not Motorolas fault if Apple was using patented technology and didn't put some money from the profits on the bank to pay for using these patents later on.
No. Because Apple does not have a Monopoly or near Monopoly in a market segment. ("iPhones" and "iPads" are not a market segment, "smartphones" and "tablets" are.)
Microsoft wasn't fined for pushing IE, but for leveraging Windows' position as a Monopoly tu push IE.
Not the "American company" argument again...
Microsoft had a binding contract with the EU comission, and they broke it.
If they hadn't, the browser ballot would bee a thing of the past in a few months and nobody would care about it anymore.
But Microsoft fucked up, and now they have to face the music for breaking a contract.
And the EU doesn't treat American companies any different from European companies. Ask Gaz du France and E.on whether they liked their fines of half a billion Euro each for collusion: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cfm?proc_code=1_39401
Microsoft was found in violation of monopoly laws because they have a near monopoly on desktop OS' and abused that position.
As much as I dislike Apples business practices: They have neither a (near) monoply on the phone market nor the tablet market. They are a very big player in both, but there is actual competition.
They take the content for free then charge money for it (indirectly through advertising), giving nothing back to the source.
Wrong.
They direct millions and millions of people to the websites of those publishers.
And the publishers want those hits. Otherwise they could easily stop Google from doing so by using the robots.txt.
What actually happens is that the publishers want BOTH: Google redirecting people to their sites and getting money from Google for doing so.
Put a swastika, or even anything resembling a swastika, up publicly in Germany and you'll be arrested. Google/Twitter/whoever is merely following the law here.
Borderline untrue.
Being German I can tell from own experience that it depends on context. In our school books, museums, TV (documentaries as well as entertainment) you can find swastikas and other Nazi symbols.
The English Wikipedia entry on swastikas unfortunately doesn't go into details, the German entry for Hakenkreuz (use Google translate) explains that education, art, documentations, research and a few more field are excempt from the prohibition.
It is simply not right that one must know the laws of an artibray number of other countries even if you've never visited them.
Hacking into systems you don't have official access to is illegal in the UK just as much as it is in the US.
So he didn't need to know the laws of another country to know that what he did was illegal.
And that he wasn't in the US when he commited a crime in the US is a weak argument too.
If you stand on the French-German border on the French side and I on the German side and I shoot you, wouldn't I have commited a crime in France (as well as in Germany, of course)?
Secondly, the guy has a mental condition.
He has Asperger's Syndrome. That doesn't stop him from knowing right from wrong or how laws work.
If sensitive systems were that insecure, then that amount of fixing/upgrading/replacing was already required whether or not they successfully detected an intrusion.
So if I break into your house because you have crappy locks it's not that bad?
Also, the costs probably are not only about upgrading the security system but also analysing what data he accessed and whether he changed anything, copied any codes that need to be changed etc.
With Apple and Google being to other big (or coming) players in this market you don't need to worry to much about Amazon succeding.
For Amazon selling books is a main part of their business. So they can not sell books below price for too long.
For Apple and Google selling books is just one small part of their portfolio. They could survive a lot longer subsidising book sales then Amazon could.
This money doesn't come from Amazon.
It's from the publishing houses that colluded on price issues following Apples demand.
Amazon is just delivering the settlement money to its customers as Amazon knows who bought what.
On average, you drive longer distances in cars then on a bike, so the stats may be true and yet you don't hear about that many deaths while cycling. Especially if less people use a bike than a car.
Their games always tended to have bad battle systems to cater to the old PC RPG crowd that has no dexterity.
That is the same crowd of ten thousands that financed a bunch of games vie Kickstarter in the last few months.
Why should a company no cater to a crowd of tens of thousands that are willing to pay for games that they like?
Your wrong.
re: subject
This isn't about Samsung.
Samsung could have made their tablet look very different than the iPad. Just look at the Nook Color, Nokia's N810, or the many mock-ups of a Nokia Tablet that look like an oversized Nokia Lumia 900 (which I think looks good).
So "copy somebody else, just not Apple"?
The question is not whether it would have been possible to design a device that looks completely different from Apples products, but whether Apple can claim ownership to design principles that have been around before and that are (one) logical solution for a given problem.
Anyway, the Samsung Galaxy Tablet and the iPad are almost indistinguishable from each other when the power is off.
Except for the logo, the different form factor and all the other little differences, that create a completely different picture.
MP3 was around and widely used before the iPod came about, so Apple HAD to support it.
And where you're wrong in regards to AAC others wrote already.
Actually, I belive this one might be the exception. So many mayor players major playes have participated and are standing behing Opus, I can easily see this becoming the dominant codec for loosy audio
Apple doesn't seem to be behind it.
So they will likely try to block Opus being used.
If they have some patents that cover Opus, on the other hand, they might be willing to start an OPUS-LA and cash in.
I would say being patent and license free (aka it can be incorporated into a GPL'd application) would be pretty far down the list
You seem to miss the fact that licence costs are alse important for any commercial program that is suppost do encode data using the codec, as it is important for manufacturers of devices that are expected to use the codec.
If a company has to pay licence fees for each smartphone or tablet it builds a new format will not take off. If it is free adoption is only a matter of programming to include the codec in the own product.
Question is - I don't think Square, Dwolla or Amazon Payments support being a merchant outside the US.
I'm German, I buy from Amazon.de and German and international merchants on Amazon Marketplace, paying with Amazon Payments.
So you where saying?
You may want to check out SoftMaker Office. Currently only available from the company's website, but soonish also in the Play Store.
FTP. USB flash drive, CD ROM, DVD, external hard drive.
Get the idea?
Amazon can do that only for so long.
It's still a company that has to make a profit.
The price-fixing spearheaded by Apple would be permanent (or at least long lasting).
And: One benefits the consumer, the other doesn't.
Lawyers and judges don't like to be called stupid...
I was only replying to the sentence I quoted.
Personally I do think that Google should not change their suggestions.
Well that friend hired a lawyer, so either his lawyer was a pussy (is this libel? *g*) or that hotel actually had something more substantial.