MS has actually made their search engine better than Google (the different categories and combining them together shows this, and it's greatly improved over Live search).
MS may look better on paper (they always do--bullet lists are their forte). But I tried setting their search engine as the default and gave up after a few weeks: it just doesn't deliver the results. For many of the things I was searching for, the best hits were among the top three with Google, and they were nowhere to be found with Bing.
Even if MS were technically better, what does it matter? Microsoft's major products (Windows, Office) didn't win in the market through being technically better (which they were not when they still had serious competitors), they won through tying, bundling, and branding. Time for a taste of their own medicine.
The only area where Google and Apple are seriously competing is in the smart phone market. And even there, the iPhone isn't even in the same league: you can get nice Android devices for a third of what an iPhone costs. Same goes for Apple's online offering, Mobile Me, compared to Google. The most-used apps on the iPhone (and probably any other smart phone) are Google's. There is nothing Apple offers that anybody outside its 1% sliver of the phone market cares about.
For Google, Android is a means to an end: to get people to do things on-line more of the time. That's why Google gives Android away. For Apple, the iPhone itself is the product. It's a conflict alright, but on very unequal terms, and terms that are quite unfavorable to Apple. The same kind of conflict is going to arise over Google Chrome vs Apple's tablet and ultralight offerings.
Huh? MacOS was fine back in the 80s, when its only competition was MS-DOS which wasn't even an OS.
MacOS was never "fine"; it was a crappy design from the ground up because Apple tried to fit a GUI into a 128k ROM. That allowed them to beat everybody else to market by a year or two. Jobs was ousted before he had to deal with the mess he created.
Xerox already had two high quality software platforms, including Smalltalk-80, which Objective-C and Cocoa were eventually modeled on. Amiga came out a year later with a high performance multitasking OS and hardware graphics acceleration.
You're implying that they're somehow "stealing" (not in the strictly legal sense obviously) the market.
When you put things in quotes that you attribute to other people, you're implying that they said this literally, and that is dishonest of you.
No, they're just making better business decisions.
No contradiction there: taking other people's ideas, cutting corners, and beating companies in a rush to market can be the better business decision. Of course, Apple can only do that because Jobs runs the company with an iron fist and keeps picking winners. How's that gonna work post-Jobs?
And despite what you are accusing me of, I don't hate everything Apple does. I own a Mac. I think it's a nice design. I think OS X is decent OS, although it's showing its age (in another half dozen years, Apple may have another MacOS problem on their hands).
When talking about user interfaces, the design IS the technology. Something that's really fast isn't very useful if it takes forever to figure out how to use, is awkward,
Yeah? And where's the evidence that Apple's machines are actually easier to use? They clearly are more fun to use and they are clearly easier to purchase. But that's not the same as demonstrably better usability.
MacOS (pre-X) is long gone.
But iPhone is not.
OS X is far superior to Windows
No, not really. Technology-wise or in terms of user interface, there's little difference between OS X, Linux, and Windows these days.
(I have read in another Slashdot article that the accuracy of the touchscreen software is lacking on Android phones however).
Just like before, you're jumping to conclusions on very little data. That was a single informal experiment by a computer magazine using one user drawing lines on a screen. That has no obvious relevance to regular smartphone usage.
Apple is flying high right now because of the way it's set up around Jobs. It's great while it lasts, but it's not a feasible long term strategy.
Sorry, but here in the USA, I don't see many people with Nokias.
Nokia was failing in the US market long before iPhone. The iPhone is no more a threat to Nokia than OS X is a threat to Microsoft. The reason Nokia is in trouble is because of Android and HTC.
There you go again, with this idea that Apple is somehow "stealing" a market away from a bunch of morons who couldn't produce a decent product. It's not Apple's fault that other companies tried to make MP3 players and smartphones, and their efforts were crap.
But that's not what happened. The original MacOS was a piece of crap, but Jobs made it look pretty, made it cheap to produce, and got it to market a year or two before other systems by cutting corners everywhere. Both Apple and the industry suffered for a decade from the consequences.
Suddenly, Apple tries their hand at it and everyone loves it.
Apple's phone market share is 1%, their desktop market share is 3%. How does that translate into "everyone" loving it? Nokia's worldwide market share is 39%, for the simple reason that most people in the world want a cheap phone with a long battery life.
You think that's "stealing"?
No, but I think it is dishonest of you to wrongly attribute quotes to me.
No, that's simple business: make a better mousetrap.
Macs sell because people like the brand and the design, not because of better technology. It's the same reason BMW and Nike sell. Often, there's nothing wrong with that. I'll get another iMac and another Nano. But sometimes there is, like with MacOS and iPhone.
The previous post was basically defending Nokia for not getting decent products to the market sooner than Apple. Sorry, if you fail in a competition with someone else, "it simply was a bit out of sync with their product cycle" is a lame excuse.
Who says Nokia has failed? Nokia is a huge phone manufacturer and they still have most of the market. The iPhone is still an overpriced niche product with some serious problems. And it remains to be seen whether Apple will be able to remain a player in this market.
No, I'm seeing a whole lot of bashing of Apple here because they don't do a lot of fundamental research--they're not "contributing" is what people like you have been saying here. For you to be consistent, you would need to apply this same line of thinking to DELL, but somehow they get a free pass.
We're talking about a lawsuit between Nokia and Apple here, and we're talking about whether Nokia or Apple has the more credible and defensible case to having invented important smart phone technologies.
So it's OK for DELL to not invest in research and build a successful business on other peoples' technologies, but it's not OK for Apple?
Apple has a tendency to come in right after other companies have developed some important basic technology and then snag away the market from them. They did that with GUIs, MP3 players, and now high-powered smartphones.
Dell does cheap products in established markets long after others have recouped their R&D investments. Dell doesn't do the end run around innovators that Apple does.
Sorry, I'm a Linux user, not a Mac user.
Well, something rotted your brain.
Lemme guess, you also think we should all start paying giant royalties to Xerox Corp. for all their research work done at PARC, which are the basis of much of what we do with computers (including windowing interfaces), even though Xerox was stupid and basically gave away all their research and didn't capitalize on it?
Xerox did get plenty of royalties, including from Apple, and their research paid off for them. They didn't manage to launch their own successful product line, but Xerox has never been able to sell anything other than copiers and printers anyway.
Furthermore, much of the work on the GUI came from academia not from Xerox; Xerox was the place that put it together successfully for the first time. Xerox has effectively given back for what they took to the research community, which is the way it should work.
I don't know whether Apple should pay royalties, that's for a judge to decide. I do think that Apple should start a research lab again, and that they should become less ruthless. Their current strategy is working in the short term, but it's going to fail in the long term; even if Jobs can keep pulling it off, he's going to be gone at some point.
Well, certainly not due to Apple Research. In fact, Apple Research probably made up a little for the pathetic products Apple was producing back then.
You think they should go back to the way they were in the 90s?
I think Apple will go back to the way they were in the 90s if they don't grow up and come up with a better, more stable long term corporate strategy than "Steve Jobs". They nearly went out of business once, and they can crash just as quickly again as they did in the 90s.
I like Apple's designs and I'd like them to become a company that one can buy from without feeling bad about it and without getting screwed in other ways.
Whine, whine. Obviously, Nokia was outperformed, and made some bad decisions. This isn't Apple's fault.
Who says Nokia made a bad decision? They're still a huge phone manufacturer and they have a kick-ass patent portfolio. They also have nothing to lose in the US. Apple is a niche player, just like they always are, and they have everything to lose.
Apple's simply doesn't need a lot of research; they're mostly a systems integrator.
Exactly what I'm saying.
Why is that no one like you is whining about DELL's lack of research here?
Because we're talking about Nokia and Apple--not Dell--suing each other over mobile phone, wireless, and PDA patents. Hence the question--legal issues aside--who has actually the better claim to having invested in, and invented, many of these technologies. Nokia has a long history of investing in research, while Apple has a long history of building successful businesses on other peoples' technologies and then killing them off.
Are you a Democrat? Blaming someone else for being more successful than you is a common trait with them.
First you ask an inane question like why nobody is criticizing Dell in this thread (read the fscking page title), and then you ask another inane question like that. Evidently, your Mac has rotted your brain.
And, no, I don't work for Apple or any company that benefits from them. Not do I have or ever had any stock in Apple (or any related company).
Based on your id, you were a retail manager for nearly two decades, four years of that at Apple. You must have received Apple stock options. For many years, your job was to sell the Apple brand.
I simply took exception to your obviously biased comments and the axe you had to grind.
There's nothing biased about it; the facts are easy enough for anybody to verify. By standard measures of research output, Apple does not engage in research. Compared to other companies, their hiring of Ph.D. level researchers, sponsorship of academic research, and participation in research grants is also essentially non-existent.
If you disagree with these statements, prove me wrong with facts and numbers and drop the lies and ad hominems.
Despite your hatred of academia, you realize that students and faculty are really important for Apple, and that's why you keep trying to spin the facts.
The UK police probably paid a boatload of money for some kind of useless social network mining or monitoring software/service based on hype. They guy who wasted the money is probably getting cold feet and they are now trying to justify the purchase with some trumped up charges.
So, in your world, (must be a stupid or obfuscated one), you are only doing research if you are sharing it?
In the real world, scientific research is measured in peer reviewed publications, peer reviewed grants, and citations.
Even if Apple had secret internal research and in some bizarro alternate universe that would be called "research" as well, it doesn't change the substance of my statement: Microsoft, Google, IBM, and others are hiring Ph.D.'s to do research, supporting the research community, and contributing scientific results to the field, Apple is largely not, no matter what you call it.
Maybe Apple turned down your appeal to fund some project you like.
Apple doesn't give out grants for computer science research, so how could they turn anybody down?
Sounds to me like someone has a bone to pick with Apple.
Sounds to me like your ego is a bit too wrapped up in Apple. Perhaps you regret dropping out of school and instead ended up as a corporate drone at Apple? Perhaps peddling 1980's technology in stylish boxes isn't all you hoped it would be? Maybe you like to redefine Apple's choice of black-vs-white plastic as "research" because you could never really grasp anything more complicated yourself anyway? Maybe the criticism is hitting a bit too close to home for you? Just a thought... in your spirit.
Why do Nokia have to throw away anything before they start something new? What's stopping them doing that now? Why is their current product base a burden on new products?
Nothing was stopping them, it simply was a bit out of sync with their product cycle.
So, Apple aren't "doing their part" with...
None of that is research.
Apple are no angels, but they're a far cry from the entity you are painting them as.
Oddly enough, there isn't a single good/bad dichotomy.
Apple does great design, great marketing, and decent engineering. They've made useful contributions to standards bodies. Their open source contributions have been improving (but are still not all that significant).
However, their record on research has gone from mediocre to non-existent. If Apple's approach to "research" catches on, graduate computer science programs would dwindle to nothing. Fortunately, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and others are not as selfish and stingy as Apple.
Jobs tried to ship a binary-only version of the gcc-based Objective-C compiler without opening the source code, in violation of the GPL. He complied when the FSF threatened legal action.
I guess that a few billion does not quality as research in academic circles,
That is research and development expenditures.
We can figure out how much of that is spent on research by looking at research output, and that means publications and citations. There are essentially none. That is consistent with the fact that Apple has essentially no research-related jobs in its labs offered (yes, I check).
Logically, either Apple spends all its money on development, or if they spend money on research, it produces no scientific output, which amounts to doing no research as well.
but it does for us corporate types.
I don't know about corporate types in general, but you're either stupid or deliberately obfuscating the issue.
If you want to demonstrate that Apple does have research efforts comparable to other companies, please supply evidence using the relevant metrics (peer reviewed publications, citations, university collaborations, funding through public research grants, Nobel prize winners, etc.).
Don't bother trying to redefine what "research" means; if Apple doesn't score on those metrics, it's not doing "research" by what the world understands by that term.
If people have already come up with these interface ideas before (and I have no doubt people have thought of them) then why didn't we see them in widescale use on phones and portable electronics (or personal computers) before the iPhone?
Because they require a lot of power: bigger screens, faster processors, etc. The hardware is also expensive. Apple can do that in their premium market, Nokia couldn't do that in their mass market. They also require a fundamental rewrite of the OS to support this stuff, but Nokia couldn't afford to throw away their existing platform, which was (and is) extremely widely used. Nokia had been thinking about new platforms, but iPhone beat them.
Apple copied it then fair play to them. Some guy describes it in a journal that is open to read (and presumably patents it), and Apple decide to use it. If it's patented, they pay royalties. Isn't that how it;s meant to work?
Apple can get away with it, but that doesn't make it "fair". The industry only works because everybody invests in research and contributes to a common pool of expertise and people; Apple, however, isn't doing their part. Google, IBM, Microsoft, and others hire tons of CS Ph.D. level researchers, Apple doesn't; who do you think would go to CS grad school if there were no jobs? And if nobody goes to CS grad school, who is going to write those journal publications that Apple gets its ideas from?
The second problem is that Apple tries to build patent portfolios around areas where they really didn't invest much in research in the first place by patenting small increments--a common and working patent strategy, just not a very nice one.
Incidentally, the creation of firewire, usb and a few other standards would like to have a word with you about "no research".
Apple had a reasonable research effort in the 90's, but they killed all of that. Apple really needs to grow up, become less of a parasite, and build up a research lab again. Probably Jobs has to leave the company first, though.
That's like asking for evidence that WWII happened. Go read up on Apple corporate history.
Also, I guess he is saying that Apple does not "spend massive amounts of money to research"
Apple used to do research and collaborate with universities, but they stopped in the 1990's.
Today, Apple spends virtually no money on research, as you can see from their non-existent research output (=publications, citations), from their lack of hiring in computer science research, and from their lack of interaction with computer science departments. Furthermore, the iPhone and almost all its fundamental technologies were invented elsewhere.
and is not responsible for shaking up the mobile phone market
They are definitely responsible for that.
and giving more power to the consumer.
With what? Lock-in not only to a carrier but to Apple products as well? By disabling such commonplace technology as tethering? By not allowing me to install software on my phone? By having a crippled Bluetooth implementation that doesn't talk to standard devices? Do tell, what power does an iPhone give me that I didn't have before?
Don't get me wrong: Apple does great product design and their products are decent (if premium priced). And Apple's impact on the industry has often been positive overall by getting other companies out of their ruts. But Apple is not the great innovator or inventor they are made out to be, and they deserve neither the credit nor the monopoly that their fanboys want to give them.
Yes, Apple has a long history of abusing patents and copyrights. Go read up on their history. Jobs also attempted to violate the GPL over the Objective-C extensions to gcc.
By the way, for the sources of NeXT's technologies, see above. One has to give credit where credit is due: the guy has taste in what he rips off from others. And that's fine.
Where Jobs and Apple repeatedly have crossed the line is in first taking other people's technologies and then trying to claim exclusivity on it.
What difference does it what computer it was developed on? TBL developed WWW and HTTP, lots of companies are using it, no company claims to have invented it, and no company has tried to patent it.
Following your "logic", Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and Facebook didn't develop anything of worth.
Well, obviously they developed something (namely a product) of worth. As does Apple, for that matter: they make decent products.
What you should think about is whether Apple actually deserves credit and exclusivity for the technologies in the iPhone.
I think Apple is gaming the patent system: they are taking whatever they can get away with from others, but creating a maze of iffy patents to hinder their competitors. Great business strategy, great for their investors, but lousy for innovation and the public at large. Other companies are nowhere near as brazen as Apple in this regard.
Nokia refused to offer Apple their standard patent licensing deals that they gave to everybody else in the industry, and wants to cross-license some of Apple's GUI patents or charge them three times as much. Naturally, Apple didn't go for the deal.
Oh, poor poor Apple. Look at what the iPhone consists of:
-- PDA functionality -- pioneered by Psion, Xerox, and Palm -- Mach kernel -- CMU -- Objective-C, Cocoa -- derived from Xerox Smalltalk and Stepstone -- App Store -- Danger (now Google) -- multitouch -- various university labs, but Apple has tried to patent it and buy up companies -- desktop sync -- Palm and Xerox -- animated GUIs -- various university labs -- MP3 player -- Kramer, Eiger, Diamond -- music store -- IUMA, Napster, etc. -- GPS, camera phone -- other phone manufacturers
Frankly, why does Apple deserve any kind of rights to this market? What have they contributed other than a lot of marketing and fluff?
The US market is currently a lost cause for Nokia anyway, and Nokia makes most of its money on low-end phones worldwide. If Apple and Nokia shipments in the US are affected, Apple is in far greater trouble.
The US has far more to lose in a trade war than Finland. Furthermore, almost none of the technologies that make the iPhone what it is were invented or created by Apple in the first place; Apple liberally "borrowed" the best ideas from other companies (Palm, Xerox, Psion, Nokia, etc.), tried to avoid stepping on other people's patents, and, well, we'll have to see how it works out.
I was merely showing you that there is, in fact, some archeological evidence to support the Book of Mormon.
And I looked at your sites and writings and concluded that it wasn't just unconvincing, in many cases the reasoning and understanding of the whole field behind it was faulty. (That's pretty much the same as it was a couple of decades ago, except now it's on the web.)
I just find it fascinating how anybody living in the modern world and using modern technology can cling to ideas that are so strongly contradicted by facts.
If you permit yourself to act morally (not utilitarian) despite the belief in consequences, then you must permit me the same.
I'm sorry, but you are arguing in generalities. The terms "consequences" and "act morally" have different meanings for you and me, and hence one can be utilitarian even if the other is not.
Anyway, my faith only entered into this because you accused me of being a materialist, and I'm not. I'm not interested in defending my faith to you beyond that. Just realize that the world isn't divided into theists and materialists.
As for my comment that your choice of Mormonism is going to have consequences, don't worry, no devils with pitchforks are going to punish you. Your choice itself is its own punishment, because even though the rewards promised by your religion may seem appealing to you now, they are ultimately meaningless.
Slashdot Mirror
MS has actually made their search engine better than Google (the different categories and combining them together shows this, and it's greatly improved over Live search).
MS may look better on paper (they always do--bullet lists are their forte). But I tried setting their search engine as the default and gave up after a few weeks: it just doesn't deliver the results. For many of the things I was searching for, the best hits were among the top three with Google, and they were nowhere to be found with Bing.
Even if MS were technically better, what does it matter? Microsoft's major products (Windows, Office) didn't win in the market through being technically better (which they were not when they still had serious competitors), they won through tying, bundling, and branding. Time for a taste of their own medicine.
The only area where Google and Apple are seriously competing is in the smart phone market. And even there, the iPhone isn't even in the same league: you can get nice Android devices for a third of what an iPhone costs. Same goes for Apple's online offering, Mobile Me, compared to Google. The most-used apps on the iPhone (and probably any other smart phone) are Google's. There is nothing Apple offers that anybody outside its 1% sliver of the phone market cares about.
For Google, Android is a means to an end: to get people to do things on-line more of the time. That's why Google gives Android away. For Apple, the iPhone itself is the product. It's a conflict alright, but on very unequal terms, and terms that are quite unfavorable to Apple. The same kind of conflict is going to arise over Google Chrome vs Apple's tablet and ultralight offerings.
Huh? MacOS was fine back in the 80s, when its only competition was MS-DOS which wasn't even an OS.
MacOS was never "fine"; it was a crappy design from the ground up because Apple tried to fit a GUI into a 128k ROM. That allowed them to beat everybody else to market by a year or two. Jobs was ousted before he had to deal with the mess he created.
Xerox already had two high quality software platforms, including Smalltalk-80, which Objective-C and Cocoa were eventually modeled on. Amiga came out a year later with a high performance multitasking OS and hardware graphics acceleration.
You're implying that they're somehow "stealing" (not in the strictly legal sense obviously) the market.
When you put things in quotes that you attribute to other people, you're implying that they said this literally, and that is dishonest of you.
No, they're just making better business decisions.
No contradiction there: taking other people's ideas, cutting corners, and beating companies in a rush to market can be the better business decision. Of course, Apple can only do that because Jobs runs the company with an iron fist and keeps picking winners. How's that gonna work post-Jobs?
And despite what you are accusing me of, I don't hate everything Apple does. I own a Mac. I think it's a nice design. I think OS X is decent OS, although it's showing its age (in another half dozen years, Apple may have another MacOS problem on their hands).
When talking about user interfaces, the design IS the technology. Something that's really fast isn't very useful if it takes forever to figure out how to use, is awkward,
Yeah? And where's the evidence that Apple's machines are actually easier to use? They clearly are more fun to use and they are clearly easier to purchase. But that's not the same as demonstrably better usability.
MacOS (pre-X) is long gone.
But iPhone is not.
OS X is far superior to Windows
No, not really. Technology-wise or in terms of user interface, there's little difference between OS X, Linux, and Windows these days.
(I have read in another Slashdot article that the accuracy of the touchscreen software is lacking on Android phones however).
Just like before, you're jumping to conclusions on very little data. That was a single informal experiment by a computer magazine using one user drawing lines on a screen. That has no obvious relevance to regular smartphone usage.
Apple is flying high right now because of the way it's set up around Jobs. It's great while it lasts, but it's not a feasible long term strategy.
Sorry, but here in the USA, I don't see many people with Nokias.
Nokia was failing in the US market long before iPhone. The iPhone is no more a threat to Nokia than OS X is a threat to Microsoft. The reason Nokia is in trouble is because of Android and HTC.
There you go again, with this idea that Apple is somehow "stealing" a market away from a bunch of morons who couldn't produce a decent product. It's not Apple's fault that other companies tried to make MP3 players and smartphones, and their efforts were crap.
But that's not what happened. The original MacOS was a piece of crap, but Jobs made it look pretty, made it cheap to produce, and got it to market a year or two before other systems by cutting corners everywhere. Both Apple and the industry suffered for a decade from the consequences.
Suddenly, Apple tries their hand at it and everyone loves it.
Apple's phone market share is 1%, their desktop market share is 3%. How does that translate into "everyone" loving it? Nokia's worldwide market share is 39%, for the simple reason that most people in the world want a cheap phone with a long battery life.
You think that's "stealing"?
No, but I think it is dishonest of you to wrongly attribute quotes to me.
No, that's simple business: make a better mousetrap.
Macs sell because people like the brand and the design, not because of better technology. It's the same reason BMW and Nike sell. Often, there's nothing wrong with that. I'll get another iMac and another Nano. But sometimes there is, like with MacOS and iPhone.
The previous post was basically defending Nokia for not getting decent products to the market sooner than Apple. Sorry, if you fail in a competition with someone else, "it simply was a bit out of sync with their product cycle" is a lame excuse.
Who says Nokia has failed? Nokia is a huge phone manufacturer and they still have most of the market. The iPhone is still an overpriced niche product with some serious problems. And it remains to be seen whether Apple will be able to remain a player in this market.
No, I'm seeing a whole lot of bashing of Apple here because they don't do a lot of fundamental research--they're not "contributing" is what people like you have been saying here. For you to be consistent, you would need to apply this same line of thinking to DELL, but somehow they get a free pass.
We're talking about a lawsuit between Nokia and Apple here, and we're talking about whether Nokia or Apple has the more credible and defensible case to having invented important smart phone technologies.
So it's OK for DELL to not invest in research and build a successful business on other peoples' technologies, but it's not OK for Apple?
Apple has a tendency to come in right after other companies have developed some important basic technology and then snag away the market from them. They did that with GUIs, MP3 players, and now high-powered smartphones.
Dell does cheap products in established markets long after others have recouped their R&D investments. Dell doesn't do the end run around innovators that Apple does.
Sorry, I'm a Linux user, not a Mac user.
Well, something rotted your brain.
Lemme guess, you also think we should all start paying giant royalties to Xerox Corp. for all their research work done at PARC, which are the basis of much of what we do with computers (including windowing interfaces), even though Xerox was stupid and basically gave away all their research and didn't capitalize on it?
Xerox did get plenty of royalties, including from Apple, and their research paid off for them. They didn't manage to launch their own successful product line, but Xerox has never been able to sell anything other than copiers and printers anyway.
Furthermore, much of the work on the GUI came from academia not from Xerox; Xerox was the place that put it together successfully for the first time. Xerox has effectively given back for what they took to the research community, which is the way it should work.
I don't know whether Apple should pay royalties, that's for a judge to decide. I do think that Apple should start a research lab again, and that they should become less ruthless. Their current strategy is working in the short term, but it's going to fail in the long term; even if Jobs can keep pulling it off, he's going to be gone at some point.
What's your long term vision for Apple?
Back in the 90s, Apple was a failing company
Well, certainly not due to Apple Research. In fact, Apple Research probably made up a little for the pathetic products Apple was producing back then.
You think they should go back to the way they were in the 90s?
I think Apple will go back to the way they were in the 90s if they don't grow up and come up with a better, more stable long term corporate strategy than "Steve Jobs". They nearly went out of business once, and they can crash just as quickly again as they did in the 90s.
I like Apple's designs and I'd like them to become a company that one can buy from without feeling bad about it and without getting screwed in other ways.
Whine, whine. Obviously, Nokia was outperformed, and made some bad decisions. This isn't Apple's fault.
Who says Nokia made a bad decision? They're still a huge phone manufacturer and they have a kick-ass patent portfolio. They also have nothing to lose in the US. Apple is a niche player, just like they always are, and they have everything to lose.
Apple's simply doesn't need a lot of research; they're mostly a systems integrator.
Exactly what I'm saying.
Why is that no one like you is whining about DELL's lack of research here?
Because we're talking about Nokia and Apple--not Dell--suing each other over mobile phone, wireless, and PDA patents. Hence the question--legal issues aside--who has actually the better claim to having invested in, and invented, many of these technologies. Nokia has a long history of investing in research, while Apple has a long history of building successful businesses on other peoples' technologies and then killing them off.
Are you a Democrat? Blaming someone else for being more successful than you is a common trait with them.
First you ask an inane question like why nobody is criticizing Dell in this thread (read the fscking page title), and then you ask another inane question like that. Evidently, your Mac has rotted your brain.
And, no, I don't work for Apple or any company that benefits from them. Not do I have or ever had any stock in Apple (or any related company).
Based on your id, you were a retail manager for nearly two decades, four years of that at Apple. You must have received Apple stock options. For many years, your job was to sell the Apple brand.
I simply took exception to your obviously biased comments and the axe you had to grind.
There's nothing biased about it; the facts are easy enough for anybody to verify. By standard measures of research output, Apple does not engage in research. Compared to other companies, their hiring of Ph.D. level researchers, sponsorship of academic research, and participation in research grants is also essentially non-existent.
If you disagree with these statements, prove me wrong with facts and numbers and drop the lies and ad hominems.
Despite your hatred of academia, you realize that students and faculty are really important for Apple, and that's why you keep trying to spin the facts.
The UK police probably paid a boatload of money for some kind of useless social network mining or monitoring software/service based on hype. They guy who wasted the money is probably getting cold feet and they are now trying to justify the purchase with some trumped up charges.
So, in your world, (must be a stupid or obfuscated one), you are only doing research if you are sharing it?
In the real world, scientific research is measured in peer reviewed publications, peer reviewed grants, and citations.
Even if Apple had secret internal research and in some bizarro alternate universe that would be called "research" as well, it doesn't change the substance of my statement: Microsoft, Google, IBM, and others are hiring Ph.D.'s to do research, supporting the research community, and contributing scientific results to the field, Apple is largely not, no matter what you call it.
Maybe Apple turned down your appeal to fund some project you like.
Apple doesn't give out grants for computer science research, so how could they turn anybody down?
Sounds to me like someone has a bone to pick with Apple.
Sounds to me like your ego is a bit too wrapped up in Apple. Perhaps you regret dropping out of school and instead ended up as a corporate drone at Apple? Perhaps peddling 1980's technology in stylish boxes isn't all you hoped it would be? Maybe you like to redefine Apple's choice of black-vs-white plastic as "research" because you could never really grasp anything more complicated yourself anyway? Maybe the criticism is hitting a bit too close to home for you? Just a thought... in your spirit.
Why do Nokia have to throw away anything before they start something new? What's stopping them doing that now? Why is their current product base a burden on new products?
Nothing was stopping them, it simply was a bit out of sync with their product cycle.
So, Apple aren't "doing their part" with ...
None of that is research.
Apple are no angels, but they're a far cry from the entity you are painting them as.
Oddly enough, there isn't a single good/bad dichotomy.
Apple does great design, great marketing, and decent engineering. They've made useful contributions to standards bodies. Their open source contributions have been improving (but are still not all that significant).
However, their record on research has gone from mediocre to non-existent. If Apple's approach to "research" catches on, graduate computer science programs would dwindle to nothing. Fortunately, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and others are not as selfish and stingy as Apple.
WTF does that have to do with anything?
Jobs tried to ship a binary-only version of the gcc-based Objective-C compiler without opening the source code, in violation of the GPL. He complied when the FSF threatened legal action.
I guess that a few billion does not quality as research in academic circles,
That is research and development expenditures.
We can figure out how much of that is spent on research by looking at research output, and that means publications and citations. There are essentially none. That is consistent with the fact that Apple has essentially no research-related jobs in its labs offered (yes, I check).
Logically, either Apple spends all its money on development, or if they spend money on research, it produces no scientific output, which amounts to doing no research as well.
but it does for us corporate types.
I don't know about corporate types in general, but you're either stupid or deliberately obfuscating the issue.
If you want to demonstrate that Apple does have research efforts comparable to other companies, please supply evidence using the relevant metrics (peer reviewed publications, citations, university collaborations, funding through public research grants, Nobel prize winners, etc.).
Don't bother trying to redefine what "research" means; if Apple doesn't score on those metrics, it's not doing "research" by what the world understands by that term.
If people have already come up with these interface ideas before (and I have no doubt people have thought of them) then why didn't we see them in widescale use on phones and portable electronics (or personal computers) before the iPhone?
Because they require a lot of power: bigger screens, faster processors, etc. The hardware is also expensive. Apple can do that in their premium market, Nokia couldn't do that in their mass market. They also require a fundamental rewrite of the OS to support this stuff, but Nokia couldn't afford to throw away their existing platform, which was (and is) extremely widely used. Nokia had been thinking about new platforms, but iPhone beat them.
Apple copied it then fair play to them. Some guy describes it in a journal that is open to read (and presumably patents it), and Apple decide to use it. If it's patented, they pay royalties. Isn't that how it;s meant to work?
Apple can get away with it, but that doesn't make it "fair". The industry only works because everybody invests in research and contributes to a common pool of expertise and people; Apple, however, isn't doing their part. Google, IBM, Microsoft, and others hire tons of CS Ph.D. level researchers, Apple doesn't; who do you think would go to CS grad school if there were no jobs? And if nobody goes to CS grad school, who is going to write those journal publications that Apple gets its ideas from?
The second problem is that Apple tries to build patent portfolios around areas where they really didn't invest much in research in the first place by patenting small increments--a common and working patent strategy, just not a very nice one.
Incidentally, the creation of firewire, usb and a few other standards would like to have a word with you about "no research".
Apple had a reasonable research effort in the 90's, but they killed all of that. Apple really needs to grow up, become less of a parasite, and build up a research lab again. Probably Jobs has to leave the company first, though.
Evidence would be nice in an accusation.
That's like asking for evidence that WWII happened. Go read up on Apple corporate history.
Also, I guess he is saying that Apple does not "spend massive amounts of money to research"
Apple used to do research and collaborate with universities, but they stopped in the 1990's.
Today, Apple spends virtually no money on research, as you can see from their non-existent research output (=publications, citations), from their lack of hiring in computer science research, and from their lack of interaction with computer science departments. Furthermore, the iPhone and almost all its fundamental technologies were invented elsewhere.
and is not responsible for shaking up the mobile phone market
They are definitely responsible for that.
and giving more power to the consumer.
With what? Lock-in not only to a carrier but to Apple products as well? By disabling such commonplace technology as tethering? By not allowing me to install software on my phone? By having a crippled Bluetooth implementation that doesn't talk to standard devices? Do tell, what power does an iPhone give me that I didn't have before?
Don't get me wrong: Apple does great product design and their products are decent (if premium priced). And Apple's impact on the industry has often been positive overall by getting other companies out of their ruts. But Apple is not the great innovator or inventor they are made out to be, and they deserve neither the credit nor the monopoly that their fanboys want to give them.
Yes, Apple has a long history of abusing patents and copyrights. Go read up on their history. Jobs also attempted to violate the GPL over the Objective-C extensions to gcc.
Well, if it's hysteria, a vibrator or manual massage of the clitoris should fix it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria
(I kid you not.)
NeXT computer
By the way, for the sources of NeXT's technologies, see above. One has to give credit where credit is due: the guy has taste in what he rips off from others. And that's fine.
Where Jobs and Apple repeatedly have crossed the line is in first taking other people's technologies and then trying to claim exclusivity on it.
developed by Tim Bersner Lee on a NeXT computer
What difference does it what computer it was developed on? TBL developed WWW and HTTP, lots of companies are using it, no company claims to have invented it, and no company has tried to patent it.
Following your "logic", Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and Facebook didn't develop anything of worth.
Well, obviously they developed something (namely a product) of worth. As does Apple, for that matter: they make decent products.
What you should think about is whether Apple actually deserves credit and exclusivity for the technologies in the iPhone.
I think Apple is gaming the patent system: they are taking whatever they can get away with from others, but creating a maze of iffy patents to hinder their competitors. Great business strategy, great for their investors, but lousy for innovation and the public at large. Other companies are nowhere near as brazen as Apple in this regard.
Nokia refused to offer Apple their standard patent licensing deals that they gave to everybody else in the industry, and wants to cross-license some of Apple's GUI patents or charge them three times as much. Naturally, Apple didn't go for the deal.
Oh, poor poor Apple. Look at what the iPhone consists of:
-- PDA functionality -- pioneered by Psion, Xerox, and Palm
-- Mach kernel -- CMU
-- Objective-C, Cocoa -- derived from Xerox Smalltalk and Stepstone
-- App Store -- Danger (now Google)
-- multitouch -- various university labs, but Apple has tried to patent it and buy up companies
-- desktop sync -- Palm and Xerox
-- animated GUIs -- various university labs
-- MP3 player -- Kramer, Eiger, Diamond
-- music store -- IUMA, Napster, etc.
-- GPS, camera phone -- other phone manufacturers
Frankly, why does Apple deserve any kind of rights to this market? What have they contributed other than a lot of marketing and fluff?
The US market is currently a lost cause for Nokia anyway, and Nokia makes most of its money on low-end phones worldwide. If Apple and Nokia shipments in the US are affected, Apple is in far greater trouble.
An alliance with Microsoft is what companies tend to do just before they self-destruct... maybe Apple's one-trick pony is coming to an end?
The US has far more to lose in a trade war than Finland. Furthermore, almost none of the technologies that make the iPhone what it is were invented or created by Apple in the first place; Apple liberally "borrowed" the best ideas from other companies (Palm, Xerox, Psion, Nokia, etc.), tried to avoid stepping on other people's patents, and, well, we'll have to see how it works out.
I was merely showing you that there is, in fact, some archeological evidence to support the Book of Mormon.
And I looked at your sites and writings and concluded that it wasn't just unconvincing, in many cases the reasoning and understanding of the whole field behind it was faulty. (That's pretty much the same as it was a couple of decades ago, except now it's on the web.)
I just find it fascinating how anybody living in the modern world and using modern technology can cling to ideas that are so strongly contradicted by facts.
If you permit yourself to act morally (not utilitarian) despite the belief in consequences, then you must permit me the same.
I'm sorry, but you are arguing in generalities. The terms "consequences" and "act morally" have different meanings for you and me, and hence one can be utilitarian even if the other is not.
Anyway, my faith only entered into this because you accused me of being a materialist, and I'm not. I'm not interested in defending my faith to you beyond that. Just realize that the world isn't divided into theists and materialists.
As for my comment that your choice of Mormonism is going to have consequences, don't worry, no devils with pitchforks are going to punish you. Your choice itself is its own punishment, because even though the rewards promised by your religion may seem appealing to you now, they are ultimately meaningless.