So because they used a similar pricing structure to Microsoft for their iOS dev program and because MS requires locked bootloaders for Win 8 on ARM, this is somehow "Apple colluding to take away computing freedom"...
I'm not following.
You're suggesting that because they had similar pricing for the dev programs, now that MS has announced that Win 8 on ARM will require locked bootloaders that Apple will also require a locked bootloader on a rumoured product in the future?
They didn't learn from history either - Adobe InDesign (then Pagemaker) was an also-ran to Quark Xpress' stallion, but then Quark got complacent after the release of OS X and thought "nah, no need to do any work to release an OS X native version - everyone uses us, no one will is going anywhere" and then InDesign came along and said "thanks for the user base!".
Sad that Adobe forgot that with the move to x86 on the Mac. Still, I guess they just didn't care about the Mac platform all that much.
+5 insightful? I guess this confirms it, slashdot has less technical knowledge that a random selection of Facebook posters. No wait, Myspace posters.
I'm struggling to find a fact in your comment, although I suppose you could have been trolling. If so, well played. You have a future with Fox News if you want it.
I think it does matter to them - on every architecture/major OS change they went to great lengths to provide legacy support, with the 68k emulator, the Classic Environment, keeping Carbon around for 10 years, Rosetta etc.
Big changes like that are always a bit bumpy, but it's not like they simply said "tough luck everyone on PPC".
They got serious flak from developers for finally pulling Carbon in Lion, which has been deprecated officially since the launch of OS X 10.1 or earlier, and apparently a decade is simply not enough warning for the removal of a deprecated API and that they were "screwing people over" for taking it out. You can't really win, I guess.
Yeah, that 30% cut for handling all the credit card processing, hosting, bandwidth, servers, storefront etc... Such a travesty.
Seriously, the 30% cut just for managing the payment stuff *alone* is a bargain, as anyone who has ever had to handle a merchant account and payment processing will tell you, especially for small transactions. It is very expensive and time consuming to deal with.
Apple's official financial statements have confirmed year over year that they do not make much at all on the store - the 30% really just covers the cost of running the thing. That's not the point of the exercise for them, though - the store exists to drive hardware sales, and the third party developers are a major part of that.
If you're stuck thinking that the 30% cut is some sort of daylight robbery or "quite bad" then you really have no idea what the costs (in time, resources and hassle) it is to handle distribution yourself.
Also, "responsible for translating the closed console ecosystem to phones"? How short is your memory?! Phones were anything *but* open before Apple entered the market. If anything Apple has made it more open, by driving the success of its main competition - Android.
I'm curious, how has Apple designed their consumer computers to take away computing freedom?
Apart from switching to x86, and including tools in OS X to make dual booting other OSes easier, and putting socketed CPUs and removable GPU boards based on MXM in the iMac, or adding extra choice for software purchases with a new distribution method (that has no effect on prior methods of obtaining software...)
I mean, sure they modified the firmware on hard drives used in the iMac to use the LED activity output to monitor the temperature, thus causing the HD fan to spin up to full if you fit a non-Apple HD in that bay, but there is a simple method to tell the iMac that a non-custom-iMac drive is installed, since it has a factory option for an SSD where this different pinout is set back to standard SATA. Some people seem to believe this engineering choice is "proof" that Apple want to make it harder for you repair your own machine... in the same generation of hardware where they switched from soldered-on CPUs to socketed ones that are replaceable with standard Intel chips from newegg. Curious!
So, how are they taking away computing freedom from home users? I mean, sure they have iOS, but are you forced to choose to use it? What was the state of "freer" handsets before and after the iPhone? Someone on here tried to argue that Apple's entry into smartphones has been bad for "open" mobile computing because before there was Symbian and Win Mobile 6 (thus, a value of 2) and afterwards there's only Android (value of 1) and 2 is bigger than 1. Despite trying to convince him that Android is in better shape than ever and offering much more as a whole than the numerically greater but technically and figuratively worse older offerings just wasn't cutting it.
It's never been better for computing choice and freedom, not only despite, but in many cases *because* of Apple - especially with the success of the iPhone (which you are free not to use, and is certainly not the "freest" handset, but has sure done a lot to push Android on).
On iOS an app really isn't going to know if the phone is jailbroken - it's merely disabling the code signing.
If you then go on to do more esoteric things (like mixing a different baseband from an earlier version of iOS, or one from a different device) then things might be different, but most jailbreaks likely have no need for that.
Why do they need to know? (they're in the "Music" folder in the top level of their Home folder - such a hard to find location, but anyway), they can just drag the files out of iTunes onto another part of the drive if they can't find that folder. If they can get to the file in iTunes to play it then they can copy it to another drive or folder easily. (On Windows I believe it's under the "my documents > music" folder, but it's been a while since I looked. It's somewhere obvious anyway).
They could also burn them to CD if they wanted (either as an audio CD or as a raw data CD/DVD with the aac/mp3 files on it - iTunes offers both options).
It's hardly a massive hurdle to leaving the ecosystem.
Probably quite a few, since Apple did attempt to work with Motorola in the wake of the RAZR's success to make an "Apple-like phone" with the ROKR - which was a massive flop, but it was an early attempt to get music onto a phone in a more seamless manner than the unintuitive phone GUIs of the time.
I'm sure one of the data points on the graph of decisions will have been "how many RAZR users also carry an iPod with them?"
But Apple is equally claiming (and has a case) that this "past use without paying" is not their fault and they should not be penalised for it.
The patent is in the 3G spec, so they had to use it. They bought licences for the 3G spec patents (there are thousands), either directly or via their chip supplier (who also pays for the use of the patents). Now Motorola is claiming Apple didn;t pay for one particular patent and continually refused. Out of hundreds and hundreds? Come on!
The argument is about how much Apple should be paying (and they know that they have to pay to use the patent - anyone claiming this is about "dodging" payment is just naive), since the patent is RAND covered. Moto is trying to get exceptions due to non payment and get "back pay" at rates not covered under RAND terms - essentially trying to end run around their own agreements about having their patent in the spec (ie, impossible not to use it) so they can hit Apple up for a huge payday.
If Apple *had* been repeatedly refusing to pay, despite many offers from Moto then I'm sure the verdict would have gone the other way. More likely it has been a long back and forth (and this case has been going a while) over the value of the patents and and cross licencing deals on the table. Moto is now trying to claim that all that time during negotiation of payment counts against Apple as "non payment of licencing".
Disclaimer: I'm sure neither side is totally rosy here - business negotiation seldom is, but it's not cut and dried like everyone seems to think.
There's no way Apple is going to start selling hardware that bakes in patented standards like GSM/3G/Wifi/etc without getting its licencing ducks in a row - they have whole departments for that sort of thing (as does any large company).
There's absolutely zero chance that they decided to try and "dodge" paying for one of the patents that they are *guaranteed* to be using (since they are in the standards). Risking their product line (and ultimately, profit and healthiness of business) on something that braindead is just not going to fly.
By all accounts, this has been ongoing for a long time. It's never been about anyone trying to avoid paying for use of patents. Just how much needed to be paid.
The patents are in the 3G standard, therefore Apple didn't infringe them "on purpose" - by implementing 3G they were obliged to use the patent, whether they wanted to or not.
Where it gets sticky is that the patents are RAND covered, so Moto must charge everyone the same. Of course, everyone cross licences, and makes other payment deals etc, but ultimately everyone pays the same. It gets more tricky when you have to decide what your cross licenced patents are worth, or how much a certain percentage of sales will be if you have forecast numbers etc.
They've (Apple and Moto) have been butting heads on this for a long time - much like the Nokia vs Apple suit. Neither side can agree on payment. Given that the patent in question is in the 3G standard, it has never been about one side *not* wanting to pay - paying the correct value is what this is about.
Yes we do, given that any time the Apple design patent question comes up, there are 20 comments on how it's a patent on rounded rectangles.
If anyone had actually *read* the patents we might actually get somewhere with the discussion. But that's a lot to expect. I've seen several comments recently that failed to even read the summary, let alone the article or any links in it.
Slashdot really has fallen so far in the many years I've been here. Back in the old days, accusing someone who holds a different opinion to you of being a shill was something that occasionally came up in jest. Now it's used as a legitimate arguing tool on pretty much every story, regardless of topic.
I'm not even sure where it began, or why? Does it somehow "validate" the slashdot community as important enough in global political policy and technology news that there are shills from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Facebook, the oil industry, the "global warming is real green scam lobby", the republican party, the democrat party, big pharma... all fighting over the supposed "must-win" battleground of slashdot comments?
The fact that you're anticipating a paid PR shill response in advance is just hilarious.
What do you think the case is about?! Apple have been trying to licence the patents from the beginning (as in, they legally have to - the patents in question are part of the 3G specification covered under RAND terms, they know that they must licence them), but exactly what they are worth is the crux.
Moto has been attempting to do away with that pesky RAND stuff and charge what it likes, which it simply cannot do. Apple is willing to pay what everyone else pays.
This would be so much easier if it was done in cash.
If it's in the 3G spec (as these patents are) then Apple have been trying to square that away from the start - it's not the first time they've faced challenges on patents supposedly in the standard spec that mysteriously are "not covered" when their design patent lawsuits started flying around.
If motorola were playing fair, it would not be at trial. (And if Apple had not been involved in a general lawsuit fight, perhaps no one would be in this mess)
It helps to understand the chemistry of interstellar space, and much of the information we don't actually know about, and post-big-bang conditions.
For example, the presence of the H3+ ion in diffuse clouds, where it has been detected so clearly exists there, but its formation processes as we understand them currently would suggest it would not form there (only in dense clouds), thus there's clearly a jigsaw piece missing. The current suggestion is that the diffuse clouds can have a "clumpy" consistency, with areas of much higher density. Things like galactic magnetic fields and other effects that can act on material in the clouds can help to explain things like this. (It may not answer the H3+ molecule question, but others like it).
I was going for satire. Apparently it's hard to tell actual facetiousness from actual argued positions on slashdot any more, such is the extremism. Pity.
Ah yes, the LG Prada, announced at around the same time - such that the iPhone and the LG Prada were displayed to the world within one month or so of each other - clearly the iPhone was prototyped/redesigned completely in that one month between Apple seeing the Prada and their unveiling! You've cracked the case, Holmes!
I've never linked to a "lolz look at this" graphic - you will not find such a link from me, since I do not post them, as much as you're "pretty sure", I can assure you that you are mistaken.
I should have clarified - the ridiculous patent lawsuits [a new way to display data/a new way to show unlocking/a new way to open files... on a touchscreen!] are what I take major issue with. While Apple's pursuit of Samsung over the *design* issue is another matter (albeit one that I agree with Apple's position, if not their choice of direction, re: lawsuit - they should have simply left it).
Also, you forgot to log in.
It seems like it's simply not possible to hold any position other than the diametric opposed ends, according to anonymous cowards. The world is seldom that black and white.
Slashdot Mirror
So because they used a similar pricing structure to Microsoft for their iOS dev program and because MS requires locked bootloaders for Win 8 on ARM, this is somehow "Apple colluding to take away computing freedom"...
I'm not following.
You're suggesting that because they had similar pricing for the dev programs, now that MS has announced that Win 8 on ARM will require locked bootloaders that Apple will also require a locked bootloader on a rumoured product in the future?
I guess that's conclusive proof!
They didn't learn from history either - Adobe InDesign (then Pagemaker) was an also-ran to Quark Xpress' stallion, but then Quark got complacent after the release of OS X and thought "nah, no need to do any work to release an OS X native version - everyone uses us, no one will is going anywhere" and then InDesign came along and said "thanks for the user base!".
Sad that Adobe forgot that with the move to x86 on the Mac. Still, I guess they just didn't care about the Mac platform all that much.
+5 insightful? I guess this confirms it, slashdot has less technical knowledge that a random selection of Facebook posters. No wait, Myspace posters.
I'm struggling to find a fact in your comment, although I suppose you could have been trolling. If so, well played. You have a future with Fox News if you want it.
I think it does matter to them - on every architecture/major OS change they went to great lengths to provide legacy support, with the 68k emulator, the Classic Environment, keeping Carbon around for 10 years, Rosetta etc.
Big changes like that are always a bit bumpy, but it's not like they simply said "tough luck everyone on PPC".
They got serious flak from developers for finally pulling Carbon in Lion, which has been deprecated officially since the launch of OS X 10.1 or earlier, and apparently a decade is simply not enough warning for the removal of a deprecated API and that they were "screwing people over" for taking it out. You can't really win, I guess.
Yeah, that 30% cut for handling all the credit card processing, hosting, bandwidth, servers, storefront etc... Such a travesty.
Seriously, the 30% cut just for managing the payment stuff *alone* is a bargain, as anyone who has ever had to handle a merchant account and payment processing will tell you, especially for small transactions. It is very expensive and time consuming to deal with.
Apple's official financial statements have confirmed year over year that they do not make much at all on the store - the 30% really just covers the cost of running the thing. That's not the point of the exercise for them, though - the store exists to drive hardware sales, and the third party developers are a major part of that.
If you're stuck thinking that the 30% cut is some sort of daylight robbery or "quite bad" then you really have no idea what the costs (in time, resources and hassle) it is to handle distribution yourself.
Also, "responsible for translating the closed console ecosystem to phones"? How short is your memory?! Phones were anything *but* open before Apple entered the market. If anything Apple has made it more open, by driving the success of its main competition - Android.
I'm curious, how has Apple designed their consumer computers to take away computing freedom?
Apart from switching to x86, and including tools in OS X to make dual booting other OSes easier, and putting socketed CPUs and removable GPU boards based on MXM in the iMac, or adding extra choice for software purchases with a new distribution method (that has no effect on prior methods of obtaining software...)
I mean, sure they modified the firmware on hard drives used in the iMac to use the LED activity output to monitor the temperature, thus causing the HD fan to spin up to full if you fit a non-Apple HD in that bay, but there is a simple method to tell the iMac that a non-custom-iMac drive is installed, since it has a factory option for an SSD where this different pinout is set back to standard SATA. Some people seem to believe this engineering choice is "proof" that Apple want to make it harder for you repair your own machine... in the same generation of hardware where they switched from soldered-on CPUs to socketed ones that are replaceable with standard Intel chips from newegg. Curious!
So, how are they taking away computing freedom from home users? I mean, sure they have iOS, but are you forced to choose to use it? What was the state of "freer" handsets before and after the iPhone? Someone on here tried to argue that Apple's entry into smartphones has been bad for "open" mobile computing because before there was Symbian and Win Mobile 6 (thus, a value of 2) and afterwards there's only Android (value of 1) and 2 is bigger than 1. Despite trying to convince him that Android is in better shape than ever and offering much more as a whole than the numerically greater but technically and figuratively worse older offerings just wasn't cutting it.
It's never been better for computing choice and freedom, not only despite, but in many cases *because* of Apple - especially with the success of the iPhone (which you are free not to use, and is certainly not the "freest" handset, but has sure done a lot to push Android on).
So wait, are you accusing me of being a paid shill for Apple? I just want to be clear here.
You are accusing me of being paid by Apple to post positive things about them on slashdot, yes?
On iOS an app really isn't going to know if the phone is jailbroken - it's merely disabling the code signing.
If you then go on to do more esoteric things (like mixing a different baseband from an earlier version of iOS, or one from a different device) then things might be different, but most jailbreaks likely have no need for that.
I have - it's all about the handset.
I know two Galaxy IIS owners who are very happy with their phones. I also know one who isn't.
Let's not pretend that either platform is devoid of good experiences.
(Disclaimer: I use iOS on a 3GS)
Why do they need to know? (they're in the "Music" folder in the top level of their Home folder - such a hard to find location, but anyway), they can just drag the files out of iTunes onto another part of the drive if they can't find that folder. If they can get to the file in iTunes to play it then they can copy it to another drive or folder easily. (On Windows I believe it's under the "my documents > music" folder, but it's been a while since I looked. It's somewhere obvious anyway).
They could also burn them to CD if they wanted (either as an audio CD or as a raw data CD/DVD with the aac/mp3 files on it - iTunes offers both options).
It's hardly a massive hurdle to leaving the ecosystem.
Probably quite a few, since Apple did attempt to work with Motorola in the wake of the RAZR's success to make an "Apple-like phone" with the ROKR - which was a massive flop, but it was an early attempt to get music onto a phone in a more seamless manner than the unintuitive phone GUIs of the time.
I'm sure one of the data points on the graph of decisions will have been "how many RAZR users also carry an iPod with them?"
But Apple is equally claiming (and has a case) that this "past use without paying" is not their fault and they should not be penalised for it.
The patent is in the 3G spec, so they had to use it. They bought licences for the 3G spec patents (there are thousands), either directly or via their chip supplier (who also pays for the use of the patents). Now Motorola is claiming Apple didn;t pay for one particular patent and continually refused. Out of hundreds and hundreds? Come on!
The argument is about how much Apple should be paying (and they know that they have to pay to use the patent - anyone claiming this is about "dodging" payment is just naive), since the patent is RAND covered. Moto is trying to get exceptions due to non payment and get "back pay" at rates not covered under RAND terms - essentially trying to end run around their own agreements about having their patent in the spec (ie, impossible not to use it) so they can hit Apple up for a huge payday.
If Apple *had* been repeatedly refusing to pay, despite many offers from Moto then I'm sure the verdict would have gone the other way. More likely it has been a long back and forth (and this case has been going a while) over the value of the patents and and cross licencing deals on the table. Moto is now trying to claim that all that time during negotiation of payment counts against Apple as "non payment of licencing".
Disclaimer: I'm sure neither side is totally rosy here - business negotiation seldom is, but it's not cut and dried like everyone seems to think.
Ha. Nice try.
Apple *wishes* they could just pay cash. This would have been settled a *loooooong* time ago.
Also, you forgot to log in.
There's no way Apple is going to start selling hardware that bakes in patented standards like GSM/3G/Wifi/etc without getting its licencing ducks in a row - they have whole departments for that sort of thing (as does any large company).
There's absolutely zero chance that they decided to try and "dodge" paying for one of the patents that they are *guaranteed* to be using (since they are in the standards). Risking their product line (and ultimately, profit and healthiness of business) on something that braindead is just not going to fly.
By all accounts, this has been ongoing for a long time. It's never been about anyone trying to avoid paying for use of patents. Just how much needed to be paid.
The patents are in the 3G standard, therefore Apple didn't infringe them "on purpose" - by implementing 3G they were obliged to use the patent, whether they wanted to or not.
Where it gets sticky is that the patents are RAND covered, so Moto must charge everyone the same. Of course, everyone cross licences, and makes other payment deals etc, but ultimately everyone pays the same. It gets more tricky when you have to decide what your cross licenced patents are worth, or how much a certain percentage of sales will be if you have forecast numbers etc.
They've (Apple and Moto) have been butting heads on this for a long time - much like the Nokia vs Apple suit. Neither side can agree on payment. Given that the patent in question is in the 3G standard, it has never been about one side *not* wanting to pay - paying the correct value is what this is about.
Yes we do, given that any time the Apple design patent question comes up, there are 20 comments on how it's a patent on rounded rectangles.
If anyone had actually *read* the patents we might actually get somewhere with the discussion. But that's a lot to expect. I've seen several comments recently that failed to even read the summary, let alone the article or any links in it.
*Apple (x2)
*copyright
*I
*iPhone
*emperor's
You also forgot to log in! (Posted from your iPhone perhaps?)
Slashdot really has fallen so far in the many years I've been here. Back in the old days, accusing someone who holds a different opinion to you of being a shill was something that occasionally came up in jest. Now it's used as a legitimate arguing tool on pretty much every story, regardless of topic.
I'm not even sure where it began, or why? Does it somehow "validate" the slashdot community as important enough in global political policy and technology news that there are shills from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Facebook, the oil industry, the "global warming is real green scam lobby", the republican party, the democrat party, big pharma... all fighting over the supposed "must-win" battleground of slashdot comments?
The fact that you're anticipating a paid PR shill response in advance is just hilarious.
What do you think the case is about?! Apple have been trying to licence the patents from the beginning (as in, they legally have to - the patents in question are part of the 3G specification covered under RAND terms, they know that they must licence them), but exactly what they are worth is the crux.
Moto has been attempting to do away with that pesky RAND stuff and charge what it likes, which it simply cannot do. Apple is willing to pay what everyone else pays.
This would be so much easier if it was done in cash.
If it's in the 3G spec (as these patents are) then Apple have been trying to square that away from the start - it's not the first time they've faced challenges on patents supposedly in the standard spec that mysteriously are "not covered" when their design patent lawsuits started flying around.
If motorola were playing fair, it would not be at trial. (And if Apple had not been involved in a general lawsuit fight, perhaps no one would be in this mess)
It helps to understand the chemistry of interstellar space, and much of the information we don't actually know about, and post-big-bang conditions.
For example, the presence of the H3+ ion in diffuse clouds, where it has been detected so clearly exists there, but its formation processes as we understand them currently would suggest it would not form there (only in dense clouds), thus there's clearly a jigsaw piece missing. The current suggestion is that the diffuse clouds can have a "clumpy" consistency, with areas of much higher density. Things like galactic magnetic fields and other effects that can act on material in the clouds can help to explain things like this. (It may not answer the H3+ molecule question, but others like it).
I see you don't understand what the words "evil" and "monopoly" mean.
I mean, you can believe that those terms apply, but that doesn't make them accurate.
I can say that baseballs are hexagonal, for example, but that doesn't change their properties.
And a link in my post is.... where?
Oh, you're counting *discussion* of the images and designs to be equivalent to linking to them! Ok! Bit of a goalpost move, but I can go with that.
Also, you forgot to log in! Is this so your post history won't be accessible via google? Pretty basic error on your part I think.
Not at all.
I was going for satire. Apparently it's hard to tell actual facetiousness from actual argued positions on slashdot any more, such is the extremism. Pity.
Ah yes, the LG Prada, announced at around the same time - such that the iPhone and the LG Prada were displayed to the world within one month or so of each other - clearly the iPhone was prototyped/redesigned completely in that one month between Apple seeing the Prada and their unveiling! You've cracked the case, Holmes!
You also forgot to log in.
I've never linked to a "lolz look at this" graphic - you will not find such a link from me, since I do not post them, as much as you're "pretty sure", I can assure you that you are mistaken.
I should have clarified - the ridiculous patent lawsuits [a new way to display data/a new way to show unlocking/a new way to open files... on a touchscreen!] are what I take major issue with. While Apple's pursuit of Samsung over the *design* issue is another matter (albeit one that I agree with Apple's position, if not their choice of direction, re: lawsuit - they should have simply left it).
Also, you forgot to log in.
It seems like it's simply not possible to hold any position other than the diametric opposed ends, according to anonymous cowards. The world is seldom that black and white.