Basically this company wants to be part of the Android group, but at the same time, build a competitor to Google's interests in the Android platform... using a forked version of Android. So Google is basically saying "if you want to be dicks and go against our interests, we're going to kick you out of our club."
It should be noted that it won't affect Alibaba or Asus's ability to use the Android codebase, just Google won't be working with them in the future.
Seems fair enough to me.
Except in this case Asus is buying an OS from a third party that used the "open source" Android core as a starting point. Asus themselves isn't building this OS. And yet, Google will punish them.
And yes, it will affect Asus's ability to use the Android "codebase", since Google doesn't develop Android in an open fashion. It is completely closed-source until it's released to the world whole. And at that point, all the partners have had pre-release copies for a year. And apparently even though Google claims Android is open source, if anyone actually tries to use that source they undermine them.
So yes, this is "evil" and it is anti-competitive. However, since Google doesn't have a monopoly yet, it's probably not illegal yet. But they're burning an awful lot of goodwill here with their continued manipulations.
Add one more thing to the Issues list: - It doesn't exist.
Yes, there is lots of promising research on all sorts of reactor designs, but it's no more the "real" solution that fusion or self-contained mini-reactors... it's one possibility being researched.
Two main reasons to incorporate are liability and taxes. Liability probably isn't a big problem for you. Taxes come down to how much for how much. There are costs associated with incorporating, including your time, separate bank account, state and federal filings, etc. If you incorporate, do it because the tax savings clearly outweigh the costs.
Also, don't bother with a corporation (S or C). If you do this form an LLC. There are many advantages which you can google if you are really interested.
Not bad advice, but the LLC vs. S-Corp decision partly depends on the state you're in. An LLC in New Jersey is $50/year and you can set it up online on a Sunday in an hour. In New York it requires publishing notices and can cost hundreds or more. Every state has their own LLC rules. The only Federal filing is a one-time EIN request. Otherwise it's usually just pass-through (disregarded entity) taxes that appear on your personal tax return each year for LLC.
Once you have it, a separate bank account is actually really nice. Your taxes at the end of the year get a lot easier if all your income and costs are in a completely separate statement. Most banks can put a business and personal account on the same online page so it's easy to manage.
3G worldphone, LTE, and decent battery life. This is actually impressive, though we've been waiting 2 years for it.
If it let you out of the Apple sandbox if you wanted, then it would be the best smartphone by far. But that sandbox is a major detractor.
Note just the 3G is worldphone. There will be separate iPhone 5 models for international LTE. From http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html there are 3 models:
iOS up to 5.x used the old fashioned Cocoa link & spring method. iOS 6 adds the linear prioritized constraint-based system that Apple put in the previous Cocoa version. That being said, it's up to developers to do it right and if Apple had flipped the switch on day 1 and told all the apps what resolution they were really running at a lot of stuff would look terrible. If you do have a well-written app I'm sure it's a matter of adding a boolean to your Info file saying "no, really, I'm cool with this". By the time the device is actually in most customers hand all the popular apps will likely be updated.
There's a lot of murky stuff in Romney's past regarding his business dealings, 1999 "retirement" from Bain (even though he has shares of Bain companies that didn't exist until 5 years later), tax shelters/avoidance schemes, etc.
It's not about Romney not "being in touch." It's about him not wanting to be sued, or seen as a crook.
So when do you think apple will give it to 3rd parties? It's coming out next week, so they are seriously running out of time to get production up and running. Or do you just blindly defend apple any chance you get, truth staring you in the face or not?
My guess is that the 9-pin connector is just a better USB 3.0 port (one where the orientation of the cable doesn't matter) and that anyone will be able to make one. It may not have Apple's Seal of Approval, but I'm guessing cables and accessories will be out within weeks.
Good facial recognition has existed for several years now. Using that tech for authentication is obvious. Patents continue to suck.
You know what sucks even more? When articles claim company C patented simplistic thing Y, when they actually patented a combination of X-Y-Z that needs to be done together to infringe. If you see an article about how some company got a patent on some common thing, it's almost certainly lazy journalism... read the actual patent before getting up-in-arms.
In this case, Google patented a method for detecting a change in who is using a device by facial recognition and responding to it by switching to the other user's account and GUI setup. Which sounds really annoying and unwanted to me; I doubt it'll ever reach an actual product. But it's not a patent on facial recognition-as-unlock as is claimed in TFA.
Review the permissions of the app. It can read and write contact information and it can take pictures and video, access phone state and identity, determine your location and record audio. At any time. Anybody actually read 1984? But at least Android tells you about it.
And iOS 6 lets you block the permissions you don't want it to have... you can turn on/off photos, contacts, etc., independently.
I think they think of the Xbox as a platform for which they sell licensing, content, and advertising space. I haven't looked at the numbers, but I'd be surprised if they're making much money on sales of the Xbox hardware alone.
In fact, they're still pretty far in the red even if you include everything, according to their accumulated quarterly statements since they created the division.
If you try and run it through the command line, it'll run just fine.
Which kind of disproves the idea that Gatekeeper is about security, if all it takes to bypass it is fork() and exec().
It's even easier than that. Select the app and press Command-O. Or clear the flag manually. Or download it with something that doesn't flag it as dirty in the first place. Or turn off the entire check in the OS Preferences. Anyone who wants to can bypass it easily.
The purpose of this thing is for the 99% of people who don't know or care to not unwittingly spread common trojans. It doesn't increase point security, but it vastly reduces the spread of malware through typical usage.
You mean the OS that, by default, blocks you from running content that isn't blessed by Apple?
Curious - how have they modified GCC to make this possible?
Or are you going to man up and say the same nonsense about Linux? Because, after all, you can't run anything RedHat hasn't blessed on RHEL. You can't run anything Canonical hasn't blessed, on Ubuntu. In precisely the manner that you can't run anything on OS X that isn't 'blessed' by Apple.
Except, of course, you can, for all three. Very easily.
Not that I'm defending the initial post, but your post contains many misconceptions which I'll clear up in case they're widespread: 1. Apple no longer uses GCC. Although it's possible for third parties to still compile things with it, they have to change all the default settings in XCode and are basically on their own. Apple is entirely Clang/LLVM now which uses no GCC code (and is BSD-licensed open source). 2. They are referring to code signing, which has nothing to do with the compiler. By default when a MacOS browser downloads an application it adds a flag that tells the MacOS Finder to warn the user about having downloaded it from the internet. Moreso, in Mountain Lion if the app with this flag is not digitally signed by a certificate which Apple issues to its developers, it will refuse to run it by default. You can change the default, you can use Command-O to run it, you can download it from an alternate browser, or you can clear the flag manually to bypass it, but for the typical user this helps with the "D00dz I gotz warez I'm sure they're not harmful let's run it!!11!" problem of trojans on the internet. 3. During this certificate process, MacOS may phone home to verify the OS-level certificate and check for blacklists, but it does not report back what app is being tested. 4. I don't believe RHEL or Ubuntu turn on code signature checking by default, or even have it as part of their core offering.
Well, then you want to catch every single child you can, to maximize the profit, right? After all, you invested in R&D, FDA approval & compliance with regulations. But once you have it on the assembly line, each vial of vaccine can't really cost much on top of those up-front costs.... so we'd better start immunizing all those stragglers too!
Lawsuits, education (ie. defending against boneheaded accusations), distribution, storage... We're struggling in this country to keep vaccine makers interested in continuing to make a flu vaccine, and that's probably one of the best health-for-the-dollar investments one can possibly make. Death from flu is similar to death from drunk driving (~11K drunk driving deaths; 3K-40K flu deaths a year depending on the severity of the season), and yet not getting a flu vaccine is not ostracized like driving drunk is. And yes, getting more children decreases the risk you'll lose money, but it's also the best way for vaccines to work. An individual getting a vaccine is only 80-95% effective, but a community getting a vaccine breaks the entire disease cycle and the effect is multiplied dramatically.
I've done this too, about 8 years ago. (Yes, I had to call the credit card company, but I got it approved in 15 minutes over the phone.) I tried to do it again 2 years ago and the dealership refused, saying they will not accept more than X thousand dollars on a credit card (forget what X was, but it was less than half the price of the car). The dealerships aren't under any requirement to accept credit cards.
You want central planning, right? You want education to be controlled from the top down, by people you have never even met, right? You want the system to be enforced through the coercive power of government, right?
Then you got exactly what you wanted. This is central planning, and it turned out exactly how central planning is supposed to.
I think you misunderstand the word "planning". This is centralized testing of the basic standards. The plan-- or the "how" things are done-- are completely decentralized. The better plans will win and the worse ones will fail, just as a good, decentralized market dictates. In fact I don't much like the No Child Left Behind's "Teach to the Test" approach, but to call this "central planning" is disingenuous and makes it harder to debate the actual issues.
There is a difference between design patents and utility patents. And with patents, the devil's in the details (aka "claims"). In this case Apple is primarily suing for violation of design patents. Things like the "springiness" that happens if you pull past the beginning or end of a list, the distribution of icons on the home screen, specific symbols in specific icons that convey specific meanings, and certain navigation paths. These are things that are more valuable than most "geeks" will ever admit to the willingness of people to buy, use, and feel good about certain products, and are therefore incredibly valuable when they're done right and worth spending a lot of money to develop a great solution. And we really do want people to spend that money to make the better product, carefully document their solution, and advance the state of the art, which they won't do if Samsung can come along and inexpensively copy them.
If a site tells you "OMG Apple just patented ", it just means they don't understand patents or what is being claimed.
Why shouldn't a sci-fi show be able to qualify as prior art for design or UI patents?
It can. However, in this case Apple's design patents do not cover the similarities between the PADD and an iPad. In fact Apple presented several tablets and phones in the trial which Apple said they do not feel infringes on their work which IMHO are closer to the Star Trek PADD.
This, by far, is the most uninteresting article I've read in ages. Seriously, how much more non-newsworthy can it get? It ranks somewhere between soap-gossip and determining the mathematical function that most closely approximates the shape of my toe nails.
So informed speculation about the biggest change to one of the most innovative products to hit the tech scene in a decade isn't news for nerds at all? If this thing is released it'll probably redefine the Christmas gaming scene and have a huge impact on the eReader and educational computing market. Yes, this is newsworthy, even if you as an individual don't want to read it.
The other question is the size. The Nexus 7 is just barely small enough to fit in the pocket of a pair of men's pants. It's got a 7" screen and a 16:10 aspect ratio. This is one of the major features of a mini-tablet versus a full-size one: you don't need to carry a backpack or manpurse or whatever in order to have a place to put away the device.
If Apple is pulling a 7.85" screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, it's going to be significantly wider. If it doesn't fit in a damn pocket, there's really no point in getting one over a full-size iPad.
Um, you didn't read the article, did you? There's an entire section about reducing the bezel size so that the iPad Mini will be the same physical size and weight with a significantly bigger screen.
The interesting part of this question is that Windows 7 runs just fine on a Mac, but I don't see Apple climbing in bed with Microsoft to put someone else's security on the Mac boot loader. So will Macs be able to boot Windows 8?
Because Chinese athletes beating US ones must be due to China having access to advanced future technology, because there is no way they could beat americans otherwise? No, wait, what?
That's not why people suspect it. She beat her own best time by five seconds, which is unheard of in swimming which is the only sport measured to the thousand-of-a-second. She also beat the previous world record by one second which was made with the now-banned super-swimsuit. She could have had a really, really good day, and good for her, but I can see why some other team's coaches might, in their frustration, suspect something else is going on.
Wow, you were so happy with Apple not providing you with turn-by-turn navigation? And now with iOS 6, you suddenly are really happy that you get turn-by-turn navigation.
I used the free Waze app on iOS before. I have the iOS 6 beta on my dev phone and it's better in some ways but not as good as Waze in others. Waze was nice in that you could log on to their map editor and fix the roads around your neighborhood. They were, however, not very good at actual directions to obscure places, and unless you did sign onto their site your neighborhood's streets were probably a mess in their DB. I'm sure Apple will not only do better, but contribute back like they tend to do to all the open source data and code projects they affiliate with.
2. This isn't quite right. The primary purpose of patents is to encourage the publication of inventions and sharing of ideas. Without them, the profit motive would encourage trade secrets and hoarding of information and techniques. Say what you will about patents, obviousness, and longevity of protections, but they have succeeded brilliantly at getting everyone publishing everything in extensive detail.
Slashdot Mirror
This is all due to Android's openness.
Basically this company wants to be part of the Android group, but at the same time, build a competitor to Google's interests in the Android platform... using a forked version of Android. So Google is basically saying "if you want to be dicks and go against our interests, we're going to kick you out of our club."
It should be noted that it won't affect Alibaba or Asus's ability to use the Android codebase, just Google won't be working with them in the future.
Seems fair enough to me.
Except in this case Asus is buying an OS from a third party that used the "open source" Android core as a starting point. Asus themselves isn't building this OS. And yet, Google will punish them.
And yes, it will affect Asus's ability to use the Android "codebase", since Google doesn't develop Android in an open fashion. It is completely closed-source until it's released to the world whole. And at that point, all the partners have had pre-release copies for a year. And apparently even though Google claims Android is open source, if anyone actually tries to use that source they undermine them.
So yes, this is "evil" and it is anti-competitive. However, since Google doesn't have a monopoly yet, it's probably not illegal yet. But they're burning an awful lot of goodwill here with their continued manipulations.
Add one more thing to the Issues list:
- It doesn't exist.
Yes, there is lots of promising research on all sorts of reactor designs, but it's no more the "real" solution that fusion or self-contained mini-reactors... it's one possibility being researched.
Two main reasons to incorporate are liability and taxes. Liability probably isn't a big problem for you. Taxes come down to how much for how much. There are costs associated with incorporating, including your time, separate bank account, state and federal filings, etc. If you incorporate, do it because the tax savings clearly outweigh the costs.
Also, don't bother with a corporation (S or C). If you do this form an LLC. There are many advantages which you can google if you are really interested.
Not bad advice, but the LLC vs. S-Corp decision partly depends on the state you're in. An LLC in New Jersey is $50/year and you can set it up online on a Sunday in an hour. In New York it requires publishing notices and can cost hundreds or more. Every state has their own LLC rules. The only Federal filing is a one-time EIN request. Otherwise it's usually just pass-through (disregarded entity) taxes that appear on your personal tax return each year for LLC.
Once you have it, a separate bank account is actually really nice. Your taxes at the end of the year get a lot easier if all your income and costs are in a completely separate statement. Most banks can put a business and personal account on the same online page so it's easy to manage.
3G worldphone, LTE, and decent battery life. This is actually impressive, though we've been waiting 2 years for it.
If it let you out of the Apple sandbox if you wanted, then it would be the best smartphone by far. But that sandbox is a major detractor.
Note just the 3G is worldphone. There will be separate iPhone 5 models for international LTE. From http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html there are 3 models:
* GSM model A1428*: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 4 and 17)
* CDMA model A1429*: CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1900, 2100 MHz); UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5, 13, 25)
* GSM model A1429*: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5)
iOS up to 5.x used the old fashioned Cocoa link & spring method. iOS 6 adds the linear prioritized constraint-based system that Apple put in the previous Cocoa version. That being said, it's up to developers to do it right and if Apple had flipped the switch on day 1 and told all the apps what resolution they were really running at a lot of stuff would look terrible. If you do have a well-written app I'm sure it's a matter of adding a boolean to your Info file saying "no, really, I'm cool with this". By the time the device is actually in most customers hand all the popular apps will likely be updated.
There's a lot of murky stuff in Romney's past regarding his business dealings, 1999 "retirement" from Bain (even though he has shares of Bain companies that didn't exist until 5 years later), tax shelters/avoidance schemes, etc.
It's not about Romney not "being in touch." It's about him not wanting to be sued, or seen as a crook.
So when do you think apple will give it to 3rd parties? It's coming out next week, so they are seriously running out of time to get production up and running. Or do you just blindly defend apple any chance you get, truth staring you in the face or not?
My guess is that the 9-pin connector is just a better USB 3.0 port (one where the orientation of the cable doesn't matter) and that anyone will be able to make one. It may not have Apple's Seal of Approval, but I'm guessing cables and accessories will be out within weeks.
Good facial recognition has existed for several years now. Using that tech for authentication is obvious. Patents continue to suck.
You know what sucks even more? When articles claim company C patented simplistic thing Y, when they actually patented a combination of X-Y-Z that needs to be done together to infringe. If you see an article about how some company got a patent on some common thing, it's almost certainly lazy journalism... read the actual patent before getting up-in-arms.
In this case, Google patented a method for detecting a change in who is using a device by facial recognition and responding to it by switching to the other user's account and GUI setup. Which sounds really annoying and unwanted to me; I doubt it'll ever reach an actual product. But it's not a patent on facial recognition-as-unlock as is claimed in TFA.
Review the permissions of the app. It can read and write contact information and it can take pictures and video, access phone state and identity, determine your location and record audio. At any time. Anybody actually read 1984? But at least Android tells you about it.
And iOS 6 lets you block the permissions you don't want it to have... you can turn on/off photos, contacts, etc., independently.
I think they think of the Xbox as a platform for which they sell licensing, content, and advertising space. I haven't looked at the numbers, but I'd be surprised if they're making much money on sales of the Xbox hardware alone.
In fact, they're still pretty far in the red even if you include everything, according to their accumulated quarterly statements since they created the division.
If you try and run it through the command line, it'll run just fine.
Which kind of disproves the idea that Gatekeeper is about security, if all it takes to bypass it is fork() and exec().
It's even easier than that. Select the app and press Command-O. Or clear the flag manually. Or download it with something that doesn't flag it as dirty in the first place. Or turn off the entire check in the OS Preferences. Anyone who wants to can bypass it easily.
The purpose of this thing is for the 99% of people who don't know or care to not unwittingly spread common trojans. It doesn't increase point security, but it vastly reduces the spread of malware through typical usage.
You mean the OS that, by default, blocks you from running content that isn't blessed by Apple?
Curious - how have they modified GCC to make this possible?
Or are you going to man up and say the same nonsense about Linux? Because, after all, you can't run anything RedHat hasn't blessed on RHEL. You can't run anything Canonical hasn't blessed, on Ubuntu. In precisely the manner that you can't run anything on OS X that isn't 'blessed' by Apple.
Except, of course, you can, for all three. Very easily.
Not that I'm defending the initial post, but your post contains many misconceptions which I'll clear up in case they're widespread:
1. Apple no longer uses GCC. Although it's possible for third parties to still compile things with it, they have to change all the default settings in XCode and are basically on their own. Apple is entirely Clang/LLVM now which uses no GCC code (and is BSD-licensed open source).
2. They are referring to code signing, which has nothing to do with the compiler. By default when a MacOS browser downloads an application it adds a flag that tells the MacOS Finder to warn the user about having downloaded it from the internet. Moreso, in Mountain Lion if the app with this flag is not digitally signed by a certificate which Apple issues to its developers, it will refuse to run it by default. You can change the default, you can use Command-O to run it, you can download it from an alternate browser, or you can clear the flag manually to bypass it, but for the typical user this helps with the "D00dz I gotz warez I'm sure they're not harmful let's run it!!11!" problem of trojans on the internet.
3. During this certificate process, MacOS may phone home to verify the OS-level certificate and check for blacklists, but it does not report back what app is being tested.
4. I don't believe RHEL or Ubuntu turn on code signature checking by default, or even have it as part of their core offering.
Well, then you want to catch every single child you can, to maximize the profit, right? After all, you invested in R&D, FDA approval & compliance with regulations. But once you have it on the assembly line, each vial of vaccine can't really cost much on top of those up-front costs.... so we'd better start immunizing all those stragglers too!
Lawsuits, education (ie. defending against boneheaded accusations), distribution, storage... We're struggling in this country to keep vaccine makers interested in continuing to make a flu vaccine, and that's probably one of the best health-for-the-dollar investments one can possibly make. Death from flu is similar to death from drunk driving (~11K drunk driving deaths; 3K-40K flu deaths a year depending on the severity of the season), and yet not getting a flu vaccine is not ostracized like driving drunk is. And yes, getting more children decreases the risk you'll lose money, but it's also the best way for vaccines to work. An individual getting a vaccine is only 80-95% effective, but a community getting a vaccine breaks the entire disease cycle and the effect is multiplied dramatically.
I've done this too, about 8 years ago. (Yes, I had to call the credit card company, but I got it approved in 15 minutes over the phone.) I tried to do it again 2 years ago and the dealership refused, saying they will not accept more than X thousand dollars on a credit card (forget what X was, but it was less than half the price of the car). The dealerships aren't under any requirement to accept credit cards.
(Some of us can only tolerate Slashdot when they change their settings to -5 Funny.)
You want central planning, right? You want education to be controlled from the top down, by people you have never even met, right? You want the system to be enforced through the coercive power of government, right?
Then you got exactly what you wanted. This is central planning, and it turned out exactly how central planning is supposed to.
I think you misunderstand the word "planning". This is centralized testing of the basic standards. The plan-- or the "how" things are done-- are completely decentralized. The better plans will win and the worse ones will fail, just as a good, decentralized market dictates. In fact I don't much like the No Child Left Behind's "Teach to the Test" approach, but to call this "central planning" is disingenuous and makes it harder to debate the actual issues.
There is a difference between design patents and utility patents. And with patents, the devil's in the details (aka "claims"). In this case Apple is primarily suing for violation of design patents. Things like the "springiness" that happens if you pull past the beginning or end of a list, the distribution of icons on the home screen, specific symbols in specific icons that convey specific meanings, and certain navigation paths. These are things that are more valuable than most "geeks" will ever admit to the willingness of people to buy, use, and feel good about certain products, and are therefore incredibly valuable when they're done right and worth spending a lot of money to develop a great solution. And we really do want people to spend that money to make the better product, carefully document their solution, and advance the state of the art, which they won't do if Samsung can come along and inexpensively copy them.
If a site tells you "OMG Apple just patented ", it just means they don't understand patents or what is being claimed.
Why shouldn't a sci-fi show be able to qualify as prior art for design or UI patents?
It can. However, in this case Apple's design patents do not cover the similarities between the PADD and an iPad. In fact Apple presented several tablets and phones in the trial which Apple said they do not feel infringes on their work which IMHO are closer to the Star Trek PADD.
This, by far, is the most uninteresting article I've read in ages. Seriously, how much more non-newsworthy can it get? It ranks somewhere between soap-gossip and determining the mathematical function that most closely approximates the shape of my toe nails.
So informed speculation about the biggest change to one of the most innovative products to hit the tech scene in a decade isn't news for nerds at all? If this thing is released it'll probably redefine the Christmas gaming scene and have a huge impact on the eReader and educational computing market. Yes, this is newsworthy, even if you as an individual don't want to read it.
The other question is the size. The Nexus 7 is just barely small enough to fit in the pocket of a pair of men's pants. It's got a 7" screen and a 16:10 aspect ratio. This is one of the major features of a mini-tablet versus a full-size one: you don't need to carry a backpack or manpurse or whatever in order to have a place to put away the device.
If Apple is pulling a 7.85" screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, it's going to be significantly wider. If it doesn't fit in a damn pocket, there's really no point in getting one over a full-size iPad.
Um, you didn't read the article, did you? There's an entire section about reducing the bezel size so that the iPad Mini will be the same physical size and weight with a significantly bigger screen.
It's still encrypted even if you don't have a passcode set. If nothing else, it's how Apple can "remote wipe" your phone in a few seconds.
The interesting part of this question is that Windows 7 runs just fine on a Mac, but I don't see Apple climbing in bed with Microsoft to put someone else's security on the Mac boot loader. So will Macs be able to boot Windows 8?
Because Chinese athletes beating US ones must be due to China having access to advanced future technology, because there is no way they could beat americans otherwise? No, wait, what?
That's not why people suspect it. She beat her own best time by five seconds, which is unheard of in swimming which is the only sport measured to the thousand-of-a-second. She also beat the previous world record by one second which was made with the now-banned super-swimsuit. She could have had a really, really good day, and good for her, but I can see why some other team's coaches might, in their frustration, suspect something else is going on.
Wow, you were so happy with Apple not providing you with turn-by-turn navigation? And now with iOS 6, you suddenly are really happy that you get turn-by-turn navigation.
I used the free Waze app on iOS before. I have the iOS 6 beta on my dev phone and it's better in some ways but not as good as Waze in others. Waze was nice in that you could log on to their map editor and fix the roads around your neighborhood. They were, however, not very good at actual directions to obscure places, and unless you did sign onto their site your neighborhood's streets were probably a mess in their DB. I'm sure Apple will not only do better, but contribute back like they tend to do to all the open source data and code projects they affiliate with.
2. This isn't quite right. The primary purpose of patents is to encourage the publication of inventions and sharing of ideas. Without them, the profit motive would encourage trade secrets and hoarding of information and techniques. Say what you will about patents, obviousness, and longevity of protections, but they have succeeded brilliantly at getting everyone publishing everything in extensive detail.