'' Did they really need to be that efficient, or is it just part of their DRM scheme, the same as the design to make it impossible to 'drag-n-drop-n-play' files? ''
Since my iPod has never, ever in its life seen any files with DRM, it can't be part of any "DRM scheme".
'' In this case a 'new' or 'last-second' bug would translate to one that's been around for several months since that's how long the final build of Vista has been available. Taking that into consideration, Apple somehow missed an obvious bug for months, or they are lying through their noses to spread FUD, or it occurs a small percentage of the time or only in uncommon circumstances. ''
Who says Apple missed it for months? It was probably discovered months ago, duly reported to Microsoft, and Microsoft didn't fix it.
Alternatively, there is this tiny possibility that all beta versions that Apple ever received didn't have the bug. Now that would be nasty, wouldn't it?
Or maybe Apple took the very sensible position that they don't do any beta testing for Microsoft unless they get paid for it - which they aren't.
'' These differences, incidentally, are probably also the reason that Germany has an unemployment rate of ~11.7%, compared to the US rate of ~5.1% (Google stats for 2005),... ''
An interesting statistics is what percentage of the population is in prisons, either as convicted criminals, or as guards or in any other way involved in running a prison. If you add that number of people who don't do any beneficial work to the unemployment rate, Germany looks a lot better compared to the USA.
''.is if you steal a $15 cd from a store, you have a right to a trial by jury, but if you're accused of stealing $30,000 of music online, it's only a civil case... ''
He isn't accused of stealing $30,000 worth of music. He is accused of stealing $40 worth of music, and they want $30,000 in damages for that.
'' Sorry, but it sounds like he's squirming like a little kid caught with his hand the cookie jar, throwing out every excuse and rationalization he can come up with. ''
That is actually what his lawyers are supposed to do, coming out with every possible defense that they can think of - this makes it more expensive for the other side (which is a good thing), and if you don't say it just at the start, you can't use it as a defense later on. As an example, a few weeks ago a slashdot article reported about a man whose laptop was searched on the border and who was convicted because of things that were found. In the original court case, he _never_ said that nobody had a right to search his laptop, so when he tried to appeal a conviction, the judge threw this defense out.
Read up on the SCO and IBM case. IBM is accused of stealing copyrighted materials. Their defenses are: We didn't do it. The material is not yours. You didn't tell us exactly what we are supposed to have copied. Novell allowed us to do it. You can't sue because it is too late. You can't sue in Utah, you would have to sue in New York. And so on, and so on. You can't sue us because if you won that would be damaging for the whole industry (yes, that is one of IBMs defenses).
And considering that his sister was ordered to pay more than $30,000, without any prove of guilt whatsoever, because apparently she wasn't clever enough to get herself a good lawyer, he is doing the right thing.
'' Well, first off disclosure of trade secrets isn't a crime. It's a civil tort, specifically breach of a non-disclosure agreement. ''
You are very confused here.
A trade secret is anything that a company keeps secret, and that is of commercial value to the company. If a company told you a trade secret without an NDA, then it wouldn't be a secret anymore, and therefore no trade secret. If a company tells you something under NDA that is not a trade secret, and you publish it, that is breach of a non-disclosure agreement. If a company tells you a trade secret under NDA, then the fact that there is an NDA makes sure that it is still a trade secret, and if you publish it, that is _both_ breach of a non-disclosure agreement _and_ violation of a trade secret. If you publish a company's trade secret that you found out illegally without being under an NDA, that is violation of a trade secret but _not_ breach of a non-disclosure agreement. If you publish a company's trade secret that you found out legally (because they didn't keep it secret), then it wasn't a trade secret anymore and you are fine.
The only bit that you are right about is that a subpoena to a journalist must be the last resort for a company. Let me just say that we know that now, and that Apple knows that now, and that Apple's employees know that now, and Apple will handle the next leak differently. The next leak, Apple will find out, and his colleagues will hang the guilty one by the balls. The sequence will be: There is a leak. Apple asks anyone to testify under oath whether they are the leak. If there is no result, Apple will phone the judge what other steps they should take, just in case. If there is still no result, there will be a subpoena and it will be granted by the court.
'' I guess that is the second major consumer electronics device which has shipped with installed viruses. I imagine if the number of infected devices is really small they probably were infected in the same way as the iPod. Yet another reminder of how shoddy some of the conditions are where all of our nice little gadgets are made. ''
They are not really shoddy. In the iPod case, some quality control department used PCs running Windows that were infected and copied trojans to any mass storage device that was attached, in that case the iPod. Since a TomTom is also a USB mass storage device, the same happened there probably.
Ok, they are using Windows, that's shoddy conditions. Would you accept a bet that only PCs running Windows can be infected by this trojan, and Macs + Linux machines are safe?
'' Mr. Spider sees an eBay store named Bob's Cat Toys. How do they know who Bob's Cat Toys actually is without issuing subpoenas? The address isn't necessarily listed anywhere until you buy something. ''
They send an email to Bob's Cat Toys (eBay lets you do that). "Dear Mr. Bob's Cat Toys, this is Mr. Smith from Inland Revenue. We seem to have no records of your company. Would you please contact me within seven days so that we can fill out all the relevant paperwork and can send you your tax forms. ".
At that point, when you receive the email, your legal situation has somehow changed. If you don't answer, you haven't forgotten your paperwork, you are actively withholding tax payments and right into criminal territory.
1. Where is the sale closed? Doesn't matter. You have to pay tax on your profit, and VAT on the sales. 2. Where is the business when they don't file paperwork? If they catch you, that is where the business is unless you can proof that it is elsewhere. Which you can't because you didn't file any paperwork. 3. Is it legal collecting publicly available data? Of course. 4. Is it legal for the government to tax income? Want to bet?
So the summary would be: The Slashdot article is wrong, there are plenty of patents in H.264. And Qualcomm owns two patents. However, they blew it on the first patent because they withheld information in their patent that the patent examiner would probably have liked to see, so they cannot enforce that patent. And they blew it on the second patent, because they knew exactly that the patent would end up in the H.264 Standard and they didn't tell anybody about it - so everyone implementing H.264 _will_ infringe their patent, but there is nothing that they can do about it.
So H.264 is full of patents that you can license without any problems on very reasonable terms (even without payment unless you build a really successful product), plus one patent by Qualcomm that you can safely ignore. Nice for everyone, except Qualcomm
'' Yes you are. The only place that can put DRM in the songs that will play on the iPod, is iTunes. Other places want to be able to put DRM in their songs, and have them be compatible with the iPod. Apple is essentially locking people into buying from iTunes if they want to buy music from big record labels online. Yes, there are alternatives to buying DRM'ed, but their legality is still not confirmed. ''
Why is that Apple's fault? Anyone can sell music in standard formats (MP3, AAC) that will play on an iPod without any problems, and Apple is not stopping them. eMusic does it, for example. If the record companies don't allow iTMS competitors to sell music without DRM, that is not Apple's fault.
'' I don't agree that this gives the power to Cisco in the negotiations. Even if Apple can't get the rights, either in court or in a reasonable deal with Cisco, they could simply change the name to ApplePhone just before release, exactly as they did with iTV...I mean, AppleTV. And even if they change the name, everybody will keep calling it iPhone, anyway. ''
I think what Apple did was actually a smart move. This is how I see the situation: Cisco has a (slightly dubious) trademark and we may assume that Apple wants it. Apple will have to pay, and the price is some number between the lowest that Cisco is willing to sell for, and the highest that Apple is willing to pay, depending on how well the sides negotiate. A confrontation would lead to the situation where Apple doesn't get the name, and consequentially Cisco gets no money. Apple has just demonstrated that they are not afraid of the confrontation - this will keep the price down.
The wikipedia link seems to indicate clearly that the "Osborne effect" is close to an urban legend. Apparently someone in the company made some disastrous and costly decision shortly after new products were announced, and that was what sunk the company. On other words, the link that you gave directly contradicts your claim.
I think that trademark situation is a bit more complicated.
Apple wants to release the iPhone in June. They _will_ release it in June, but possibly not under the name iPhone. Cisco is officially in possession of the trademark "iPhone", but they might lose it. The name "iPhone" has lots of value for Apple. It has very little or no value for Cisco, except to use it to get money from Apple. If Apple releases the iPhone lets say as "Apple Phone" or "The Phone", Cisco has no chance to get any money from Apple.
So what is Cisco's goal? If their goal is to stop Apple from using their trademark in June, they can easily achieve that. If they want to stop Apple forever, that would be more difficult, but after June Apple won't want the name anymore. There is the risk that they are not legal owner of the trademark, and if Apple won a countersuit that could be very, very expensive.
If their goal is to get money from Apple, then they have to have an agreement in place before the iPhone ships. There will be a price; the price will depend on how the legal situation looks. If Apple is totally convinced that Cisco messed up and let their registration slip, they won't pay too much. If they think that Cisco's rights are secure, they will pay a lot. But important is that after June, the value of that name is close to zero.
'' Forget whether $4.99 is a fair price. The important issue is whether Apple's explanation is really true, i.e. that they have to charge for it. ''
On the other hand, if Apple said "we charge you $4.99 just because we are greedy", there would be nothing you could do about it. If you wanted the upgrade, you would have to cough up the money. With the situation as it is, I believe that it is illegal, but not unethical, to give away a copy of the upgrade to your friends, because Apple doesn't really want to charge for it.
'' Then where's the shareholder class action against Steve Jobs? ''
There are quite a few running. Note that you don't necessarily need any angry shareholders to start a shareholder class action lawsuit. There has been a case where a man was used as the lead name in a class action lawsuit without his consent, complained about it, and was promptly sued by the law firm that started the lawsuit!
'' At the end of the day, the only way in which different cases of infringement are fungible is if opposed parties agree to trade suit cancellations. They could hammer Cisco as hard as they want and Cisco's position vis-a-vis Apple would (probably) not be affected at all. ''
The copyright holders could sell lets say 50 percent of their copyrights to Apple, which might be happy to pay a generous amount of money for them to have some ammunition against Cisco. The original copyright holders get a nice amount of money, they can still sue Cisco for copyright infringement, and Apple can do the same. The GPL status of the software wouldn't be affected. (If they sold _all_ copyrights to Apple, the software would be just as free, but only Apple could sue any GPL abusers, and of course Apple could build a non-free version itself).
'' It's not as if no one knew that hardware had 802.11n support. Even though Apple didn't advertise it, that was common knowledge, wasn't it? If you buy a piece of hardware, I'd say you're entitled to use it--even the parts that aren't advertised--without paying for it again. ''
What if your Mac is broken, it is repaired under warranty by replacing the motherboard, and the new motherboard has hardware without 802.11n support?
You didn't pay for that specific bit of hardware; you paid for a computer that does all the things it is advertised to do. And of course you are entitled to use it without paying again - if you can find someone who gives you a firmware upgrade for free.
'' This explanation only makes sense if you consider the product "not delivered" until the last features are added. This makes no sense whatsoever, because it's not like people are saying, okay, I'm buying this Apple product, but my contract with them says that I get my money back if they don't add features x, y, and z. That would be what should cause an accounting department worry. Looks here like Apple just found a flimsy accounting excuse for trying to collect more money, and ran with it. Given all the negative media attention they are gathering recently, you have to wonder about this sort of thing. ''
You can't fully recognize revenue when you still have work to do. Say Apple sells 1 million iMacs for $1000 each. Then they put into their box: 750mil for iMacs, 150mil for warranty, 100mil for software updates. The numbers must be realistic. The 750 mil are recognised immediately. The 150mil are recognized as warranties expire. The 100mil are recognized over several years, until a point is reached where Apple can say "if anything is wrong with the software, we won't fix it". Probably over ten years.
'' Here's how Apple can get around SOX: Put the update on their site, list it as BETA, let anyone register to be a "Beta Tester" for the application,... ''
I could imagine that Sarbanes-Oxley is very sensitive about any attempts to get around it.
'' Or, why not value it at marginal cost, and give it to users for free and write it off under goodwill? I'm no accountant, but it smells like something fishy is going on. Charging 5 dollars for what amounts to a software upgrade puts a huge dent in adoption rates; are they perhaps worried that some of their other devices without 802.11n support will be hurt against competition that does support n? ''
I guess the whole thing sound ridiculous to you, as it does to me, and probably to Apple's accountants as well.
The problem is that the USA are full of ambulance-chasing lawyers, and if Apple did what appears the reasonable thing to do (free upgrade), then you can be guaranteed that someone would start a class action lawsuit against Apple.
'' It hasn't. However, the moment he tries to use it on one of the large companies, they'll haul the matter in to court, most likely bankrupting Mr. Cox in the process. ''
There are two possibilities how this could go to court:
1. Mr. Cox finds out that for example Microsoft does actually infringe on his patent, and he tries to do an Eolas on them. You can be sure that he would find lawyers who will happily support him for 60 percent of the proceeds on a no win, no fee basis. Mr. Cox would go down in public opinion quite a lot, but he might not care with $100mil in his pocket.
2. Microsoft starts attacking Linux with patent claims, and Mr. Cox's patent is used as part of the "assured mutual destruction" policy that patents are used for. It won't be Mr. Cox paying for the court case.
'' Then there are people who treat IT workers as their own personal slaves, requests such as "change my printer cartridge too" - things that frankly, even a monkey could be trained to do, this type of thing is completely demoralising. If you had a mechanic out to look at your car, what do you think their reaction would be if you turned round and say "Oh go and fill it up with gas for me too". ''
I would think that someone who changes printer cartridges every day will do the job in two seconds, whereas someone who does it once a year will take ages, with a good chance of getting toner on their clothes, hurting themselves, damaging the printer, and causing more trouble that the experienced person will take much longer than two seconds to fix.
And you would never hear _me_ saying that a monkey could be trained to do _my_ job.
'' Not a double standard. Apple does not allow other companies to use FairPlay - if they would, every MP3 player would support it. '
I find this highly unlikely. You see the DRM lockin, but the much stronger effect is the AAC lock-in. Many people will encode their music in AAC format using iTunes. Every MP3 player could have got a license for AAC, but nobody did. My whole music collection is in AAC format. There is no way I would ever buy a player that doesn't support AAC, but nobody did - strangely enough, until Microsoft built the Zune...
Slashdot Mirror
'' Did they really need to be that efficient, or is it just part of their DRM scheme, the same as the design to make it impossible to 'drag-n-drop-n-play' files? ''
Since my iPod has never, ever in its life seen any files with DRM, it can't be part of any "DRM scheme".
'' Of course, if they just implemented the iPod as a USB mass storage device, there would probably not be any issues at all. ''
Yes, this should be modded as insightful, except that the iPod _is_ a USB mass storage device...
For every problem there is a solution that is obvious, simple and wrong.
'' In this case a 'new' or 'last-second' bug would translate to one that's been around for several months since that's how long the final build of Vista has been available. Taking that into consideration, Apple somehow missed an obvious bug for months, or they are lying through their noses to spread FUD, or it occurs a small percentage of the time or only in uncommon circumstances. ''
Who says Apple missed it for months? It was probably discovered months ago, duly reported to Microsoft, and Microsoft didn't fix it.
Alternatively, there is this tiny possibility that all beta versions that Apple ever received didn't have the bug. Now that would be nasty, wouldn't it?
Or maybe Apple took the very sensible position that they don't do any beta testing for Microsoft unless they get paid for it - which they aren't.
'' These differences, incidentally, are probably also the reason that Germany has an unemployment rate of ~11.7%, compared to the US rate of ~5.1% (Google stats for 2005), ... ''
An interesting statistics is what percentage of the population is in prisons, either as convicted criminals, or as guards or in any other way involved in running a prison. If you add that number of people who don't do any beneficial work to the unemployment rate, Germany looks a lot better compared to the USA.
'' .is if you steal a $15 cd from a store, you have a right to a trial by jury, but if you're accused of stealing $30,000 of music online, it's only a civil case... ''
He isn't accused of stealing $30,000 worth of music. He is accused of stealing $40 worth of music, and they want $30,000 in damages for that.
'' Sorry, but it sounds like he's squirming like a little kid caught with his hand the cookie jar, throwing out every excuse and rationalization he can come up with. ''
That is actually what his lawyers are supposed to do, coming out with every possible defense that they can think of - this makes it more expensive for the other side (which is a good thing), and if you don't say it just at the start, you can't use it as a defense later on. As an example, a few weeks ago a slashdot article reported about a man whose laptop was searched on the border and who was convicted because of things that were found. In the original court case, he _never_ said that nobody had a right to search his laptop, so when he tried to appeal a conviction, the judge threw this defense out.
Read up on the SCO and IBM case. IBM is accused of stealing copyrighted materials. Their defenses are: We didn't do it. The material is not yours. You didn't tell us exactly what we are supposed to have copied. Novell allowed us to do it. You can't sue because it is too late. You can't sue in Utah, you would have to sue in New York. And so on, and so on. You can't sue us because if you won that would be damaging for the whole industry (yes, that is one of IBMs defenses).
And considering that his sister was ordered to pay more than $30,000, without any prove of guilt whatsoever, because apparently she wasn't clever enough to get herself a good lawyer, he is doing the right thing.
'' Well, first off disclosure of trade secrets isn't a crime. It's a civil tort, specifically breach of a non-disclosure agreement. ''
You are very confused here.
A trade secret is anything that a company keeps secret, and that is of commercial value to the company.
If a company told you a trade secret without an NDA, then it wouldn't be a secret anymore, and therefore no trade secret.
If a company tells you something under NDA that is not a trade secret, and you publish it, that is breach of a non-disclosure agreement.
If a company tells you a trade secret under NDA, then the fact that there is an NDA makes sure that it is still a trade secret, and if you publish it, that is _both_ breach of a non-disclosure agreement _and_ violation of a trade secret.
If you publish a company's trade secret that you found out illegally without being under an NDA, that is violation of a trade secret but _not_ breach of a non-disclosure agreement.
If you publish a company's trade secret that you found out legally (because they didn't keep it secret), then it wasn't a trade secret anymore and you are fine.
The only bit that you are right about is that a subpoena to a journalist must be the last resort for a company. Let me just say that we know that now, and that Apple knows that now, and that Apple's employees know that now, and Apple will handle the next leak differently. The next leak, Apple will find out, and his colleagues will hang the guilty one by the balls. The sequence will be: There is a leak. Apple asks anyone to testify under oath whether they are the leak. If there is no result, Apple will phone the judge what other steps they should take, just in case. If there is still no result, there will be a subpoena and it will be granted by the court.
'' I guess that is the second major consumer electronics device which has shipped with installed viruses. I imagine if the number of infected devices is really small they probably were infected in the same way as the iPod. Yet another reminder of how shoddy some of the conditions are where all of our nice little gadgets are made. ''
They are not really shoddy. In the iPod case, some quality control department used PCs running Windows that were infected and copied trojans to any mass storage device that was attached, in that case the iPod. Since a TomTom is also a USB mass storage device, the same happened there probably.
Ok, they are using Windows, that's shoddy conditions.
Would you accept a bet that only PCs running Windows can be infected by this trojan, and Macs + Linux machines are safe?
'' Mr. Spider sees an eBay store named Bob's Cat Toys. How do they know who Bob's Cat Toys actually is without issuing subpoenas? The address isn't necessarily listed anywhere until you buy something. ''
They send an email to Bob's Cat Toys (eBay lets you do that). "Dear Mr. Bob's Cat Toys, this is Mr. Smith from Inland Revenue. We seem to have no records of your company. Would you please contact me within seven days so that we can fill out all the relevant paperwork and can send you your tax forms. ".
At that point, when you receive the email, your legal situation has somehow changed. If you don't answer, you haven't forgotten your paperwork, you are actively withholding tax payments and right into criminal territory.
1. Where is the sale closed? Doesn't matter. You have to pay tax on your profit, and VAT on the sales.
2. Where is the business when they don't file paperwork? If they catch you, that is where the business is unless you can proof that it is elsewhere. Which you can't because you didn't file any paperwork.
3. Is it legal collecting publicly available data? Of course.
4. Is it legal for the government to tax income? Want to bet?
Reposting after posting as AC:
So the summary would be: The Slashdot article is wrong, there are plenty of patents in H.264. And Qualcomm owns two patents. However, they blew it on the first patent because they withheld information in their patent that the patent examiner would probably have liked to see, so they cannot enforce that patent. And they blew it on the second patent, because they knew exactly that the patent would end up in the H.264 Standard and they didn't tell anybody about it - so everyone implementing H.264 _will_ infringe their patent, but there is nothing that they can do about it.
So H.264 is full of patents that you can license without any problems on very reasonable terms (even without payment unless you build a really successful product), plus one patent by Qualcomm that you can safely ignore. Nice for everyone, except Qualcomm
'' Yes you are. The only place that can put DRM in the songs that will play on the iPod, is iTunes. Other places want to be able to put DRM in their songs, and have them be compatible with the iPod. Apple is essentially locking people into buying from iTunes if they want to buy music from big record labels online. Yes, there are alternatives to buying DRM'ed, but their legality is still not confirmed. ''
Why is that Apple's fault? Anyone can sell music in standard formats (MP3, AAC) that will play on an iPod without any problems, and Apple is not stopping them. eMusic does it, for example. If the record companies don't allow iTMS competitors to sell music without DRM, that is not Apple's fault.
'' I don't agree that this gives the power to Cisco in the negotiations. Even if Apple can't get the rights, either in court or in a reasonable deal with Cisco, they could simply change the name to ApplePhone just before release, exactly as they did with iTV...I mean, AppleTV. And even if they change the name, everybody will keep calling it iPhone, anyway. ''
I think what Apple did was actually a smart move. This is how I see the situation: Cisco has a (slightly dubious) trademark and we may assume that Apple wants it. Apple will have to pay, and the price is some number between the lowest that Cisco is willing to sell for, and the highest that Apple is willing to pay, depending on how well the sides negotiate. A confrontation would lead to the situation where Apple doesn't get the name, and consequentially Cisco gets no money. Apple has just demonstrated that they are not afraid of the confrontation - this will keep the price down.
The wikipedia link seems to indicate clearly that the "Osborne effect" is close to an urban legend. Apparently someone in the company made some disastrous and costly decision shortly after new products were announced, and that was what sunk the company. On other words, the link that you gave directly contradicts your claim.
I think that trademark situation is a bit more complicated.
Apple wants to release the iPhone in June. They _will_ release it in June, but possibly not under the name iPhone.
Cisco is officially in possession of the trademark "iPhone", but they might lose it.
The name "iPhone" has lots of value for Apple. It has very little or no value for Cisco, except to use it to get money from Apple.
If Apple releases the iPhone lets say as "Apple Phone" or "The Phone", Cisco has no chance to get any money from Apple.
So what is Cisco's goal? If their goal is to stop Apple from using their trademark in June, they can easily achieve that. If they want to stop Apple forever, that would be more difficult, but after June Apple won't want the name anymore. There is the risk that they are not legal owner of the trademark, and if Apple won a countersuit that could be very, very expensive.
If their goal is to get money from Apple, then they have to have an agreement in place before the iPhone ships. There will be a price; the price will depend on how the legal situation looks. If Apple is totally convinced that Cisco messed up and let their registration slip, they won't pay too much. If they think that Cisco's rights are secure, they will pay a lot. But important is that after June, the value of that name is close to zero.
'' Forget whether $4.99 is a fair price. The important issue is whether Apple's explanation is really true, i.e. that they have to charge for it. ''
On the other hand, if Apple said "we charge you $4.99 just because we are greedy", there would be nothing you could do about it. If you wanted the upgrade, you would have to cough up the money. With the situation as it is, I believe that it is illegal, but not unethical, to give away a copy of the upgrade to your friends, because Apple doesn't really want to charge for it.
'' Then where's the shareholder class action against Steve Jobs? ''
There are quite a few running. Note that you don't necessarily need any angry shareholders to start a shareholder class action lawsuit. There has been a case where a man was used as the lead name in a class action lawsuit without his consent, complained about it, and was promptly sued by the law firm that started the lawsuit!
'' At the end of the day, the only way in which different cases of infringement are fungible is if opposed parties agree to trade suit cancellations. They could hammer Cisco as hard as they want and Cisco's position vis-a-vis Apple would (probably) not be affected at all. ''
The copyright holders could sell lets say 50 percent of their copyrights to Apple, which might be happy to pay a generous amount of money for them to have some ammunition against Cisco. The original copyright holders get a nice amount of money, they can still sue Cisco for copyright infringement, and Apple can do the same. The GPL status of the software wouldn't be affected. (If they sold _all_ copyrights to Apple, the software would be just as free, but only Apple could sue any GPL abusers, and of course Apple could build a non-free version itself).
'' It's not as if no one knew that hardware had 802.11n support. Even though Apple didn't advertise it, that was common knowledge, wasn't it? If you buy a piece of hardware, I'd say you're entitled to use it--even the parts that aren't advertised--without paying for it again. ''
What if your Mac is broken, it is repaired under warranty by replacing the motherboard, and the new motherboard has hardware without 802.11n support?
You didn't pay for that specific bit of hardware; you paid for a computer that does all the things it is advertised to do.
And of course you are entitled to use it without paying again - if you can find someone who gives you a firmware upgrade for free.
'' This explanation only makes sense if you consider the product "not delivered" until the last features are added. This makes no sense whatsoever, because it's not like people are saying, okay, I'm buying this Apple product, but my contract with them says that I get my money back if they don't add features x, y, and z. That would be what should cause an accounting department worry. Looks here like Apple just found a flimsy accounting excuse for trying to collect more money, and ran with it. Given all the negative media attention they are gathering recently, you have to wonder about this sort of thing. ''
You can't fully recognize revenue when you still have work to do. Say Apple sells 1 million iMacs for $1000 each. Then they put into their box: 750mil for iMacs, 150mil for warranty, 100mil for software updates. The numbers must be realistic. The 750 mil are recognised immediately. The 150mil are recognized as warranties expire. The 100mil are recognized over several years, until a point is reached where Apple can say "if anything is wrong with the software, we won't fix it". Probably over ten years.
'' Here's how Apple can get around SOX: Put the update on their site, list it as BETA, let anyone register to be a "Beta Tester" for the application, ... ''
I could imagine that Sarbanes-Oxley is very sensitive about any attempts to get around it.
'' Or, why not value it at marginal cost, and give it to users for free and write it off under goodwill? I'm no accountant, but it smells like something fishy is going on. Charging 5 dollars for what amounts to a software upgrade puts a huge dent in adoption rates; are they perhaps worried that some of their other devices without 802.11n support will be hurt against competition that does support n? ''
I guess the whole thing sound ridiculous to you, as it does to me, and probably to Apple's accountants as well.
The problem is that the USA are full of ambulance-chasing lawyers, and if Apple did what appears the reasonable thing to do (free upgrade), then you can be guaranteed that someone would start a class action lawsuit against Apple.
'' It hasn't. However, the moment he tries to use it on one of the large companies, they'll haul the matter in to court, most likely bankrupting Mr. Cox in the process. ''
There are two possibilities how this could go to court:
1. Mr. Cox finds out that for example Microsoft does actually infringe on his patent, and he tries to do an Eolas on them. You can be sure that he would find lawyers who will happily support him for 60 percent of the proceeds on a no win, no fee basis. Mr. Cox would go down in public opinion quite a lot, but he might not care with $100mil in his pocket.
2. Microsoft starts attacking Linux with patent claims, and Mr. Cox's patent is used as part of the "assured mutual destruction" policy that patents are used for. It won't be Mr. Cox paying for the court case.
'' Then there are people who treat IT workers as their own personal slaves, requests such as "change my printer cartridge too" - things that frankly, even a monkey could be trained to do, this type of thing is completely demoralising. If you had a mechanic out to look at your car, what do you think their reaction would be if you turned round and say "Oh go and fill it up with gas for me too". ''
I would think that someone who changes printer cartridges every day will do the job in two seconds, whereas someone who does it once a year will take ages, with a good chance of getting toner on their clothes, hurting themselves, damaging the printer, and causing more trouble that the experienced person will take much longer than two seconds to fix.
And you would never hear _me_ saying that a monkey could be trained to do _my_ job.
'' Not a double standard. Apple does not allow other companies to use FairPlay - if they would, every MP3 player would support it. '
I find this highly unlikely. You see the DRM lockin, but the much stronger effect is the AAC lock-in. Many people will encode their music in AAC format using iTunes. Every MP3 player could have got a license for AAC, but nobody did. My whole music collection is in AAC format. There is no way I would ever buy a player that doesn't support AAC, but nobody did - strangely enough, until Microsoft built the Zune...