Apple didn't "brick" iPhones, it warned users who had modified their phone firmware that installing updated software could result in a phone set that no longer worked because the tampered firmware was not compatible with higher level software on the phone. If you're not aware, tampering with firmware on devices may result in their failure to operate as expected. Blaming Apple in such a circumstance is the same absurdist garbage of irresponsible neanderthals.
You stuffed the phrase "hateful propaganda" into my mouth. I said it was "a wildly problematic rant/ad for his book" and that "Kahney has a loose grasp of reality and contradicts himself repeatedly."
Stick with facts; don't get all emotional and use over the top language as a substitute for having a point. Kahney does write gushy love letter bullshit, but it's also laced with absurdist insinuations of "evil." It's certainly not worth reading, and does not deserve being the basis of your worldview.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but when you equate Microsoft's behaviors with Apple's you are comparing being emotionally offended with a being the victim of a crime. My comments are only intended to separate fantasy from reality for you.
If you buy a Potter book (and please don't just on my account), and then rewrite the ending to please a given audience, and then sell it as the work of the Potter author, you are not operating a book store, but rather violating copyright.
Paystar is not just bundling Mac OS X retail boxes with PCs. That would be somewhat grey area because the user would be violating their license with Apple to install it on Paystar's PC, but it would not be illegal because Apple can't restrict resale of its retail box.
Paystar is violating the license it acquired when the bought the box by installing it on their PC, and is further modifying it (because installing Leopard on a PC requires modification), a direct and obvious violation of copyright.
Apple is not taking action against users who buy and install Leopard on their own PC, just as you describe that Microsoft doesn't care about petty one-off license things (although Microsoft will kill your PC in a heartbeat if it suspects you have not paid for a valid license).
However, allowing Paystar to represent that it is selling a functional equivalent to an Apple Mac would be more than lost money for Apple, it would be a brand smear and potentially expose Apple to liability. Hackers at home don't expect Mac OS X to run flawlessly on whatever random hardware they decide to use, but some small business or litigious retired couple that buys a Paystar PC being marketed as a cheap Mac will at some point demand that Apple solve their problems because they think they have a legal license. Also, all of Paystar's customers will have the impression that any problems they have are the fault of Apple, which is why companies choose no to do business with other companies they do not want to be associated with.
Except that when you represent another's work as your own after making a derivation of it, nor can you present a modified work as being the work of another party. In neither case are you simply "reselling it." You are modifying it for resale as a new work. This is particularly problematic if the changes you make have the likely outcome of making the other party's work look faulty.
Apple does not even sell Mac OS X "at a full retail price," it licenses it as an upgrade for running on (and only on) Mac hardware. It's find if you don't like that, but that doesn't give you commercial rights to pirate it.
You can't buy a Madonna CD, remix it, burn it to CD-R and resell it as a Madonna album, even if you buy a copy for every copy you sell. That is still copyright violation, because Madonna had the right to decide what is sold as her work.
You also can't buy a CD (which is licensed for individual use, as CDs are), and broadcast it on your radio station. You also can't buy a DVD and play it in your own theater. Those are licensing violations.
The fact that you aren't aware of how licensing works doesn't make you a suitable arbitrator of how one company can reuse the work of another.
"Breach of contract" implies the presence of a contract. Again, you seem to be assuming that Apple has an implied contract to sell Mac OS X to anyone who wants to sell derivations of it to enhance the value of their hardware. That is not the case.
Except that Sony's junkware doesn't remove copy protection from and recompile the kernel of Windows in order to bypass not being granted an OEM license.
Additionally, Sony has an OEM license from Microsoft.
If Apple granted PC makers the right to license its software, and then punished specific licensees (and charged them extra licensing fees) for advertising that they also sold their own PCs with Linux or OS/2 or some other competitors' software, then you might have some correlation with how Microsoft does its business. That could be argued to be anti-competitive and a restraint of free trade
However, Apple has no moral obligation to enrich Paystar, nor any moral obligation that forces it to license its technology to third parties.
Apple does have a software copyright that protects it from having third parties represent that Apple's software is running as intended on their PCs, particularly when Paystar's PCs make Mac OS X look slow, problematic, unstable, and expose users to data loss or other problems that could easily expose Apple to liability.
If Apple can get sued for the iPhone 3G not working where 3G service is unavailable, do you think Apple could be sued for allowing Paystar to offer an Implied Warranty of Fitness for a Particular Purpose, obligating Apple to maintain responsibility for developing custom drivers and support for whatever hardware Paystar can cobble together?
Paystar is claiming it has rights to modify and distribute Apple's software. It clams Apple owes it a free ride to add value to its PC hardware using Apple's work. Paystar's ridiculous claim infers that it has a right to profit from Apple's work, but has no responsibility to follow Apple's license or respect Apple's copyright.
Copyright gives Apple, not Paystar, the right to decide how to use, sell or distribute its own work.
SCO demanded that it owned the copyright for work done by others, simply because it wanted to charge money for work it had not done. It sued IBM for "interfering with a legitimate business practice" of shaking down Linux users.
Both SCO and Paystar are demanding to profit from work done by others that they have no right to demand.
An analogy would be if I said Paystar is like a car that wants to park on your lawn, and sues to for being upset about it.
Running Mac OS X on generic PCs requires making changes to the software, including defeating kexts and installing support for your own hardware.
That changes how it works. If it were a matter of buying a Leopard retail box and turning it on and performign an install, why would Paystar even be in the news? Why not just buy a Dell or whatever and then grab a Leopard retail box?
Don't confuse Apple with its lawyers. Apple gets sued regularly over frivolous bullshit like Paystar's, so the the company's legal team is a ravenous bunch of sharks.
The Wired sensationalism about lawyers' overstated legalese asking not to get unsolicited idea submissions outside of the "sign away your rights" web form for feedback is to prevent a case where somebody sends in an idea Apple is already working on, sort of like sending the violated IP to a clean room team. Of course they don't want to get sued, and lawyers overreact to protect their assets.
Microsoft isn't "evil" for bundling software, it violated its consent decree (its agreement with the judge in a legal case) in order to destroy competition. Apple has no consent decree to violate, and has not been charged by the US with anti-competitive behaviors. So you're grasping at straws.
Jobs does not own the RIAA's music, so he can only do what they allow him to do. He replaced strong Windows Media DRM from Microsoft with FairPlay DRM that end users can strip off themselves using iTunes burn function. So again, you are being ridiculous.
Apple does not have a moral obligation to hand its IP over to Microsoft just because it did once already in the mid 80s. The "little guy" you are rooting for here is a convicted monopolist. It's like you're complaining about Bernhard Goetz being criminal.
Apple never "forced the installation of Safari," it presented it as a software update. Microsoft presents new versions of its own browser as a software update, on both the Mac (when it did) and Windows. Again, you are being wildly disingenuous.
Linking to Leander Kahney's wildly problematic rant/ad for his book doesn't help your case, because Kahney has a loose grasp of reality and contradicts himself repeatedly.
As John Gruber noted (and thank God, as it spared me from explaining exactly why Kahney is so full of himself):
"Kahney's central premise, insofar as there is a premise, is that Apple has succeeded either despite or because it operates in ways that are contrary to conventional wisdom. [... Kahney says Apple is] "Irredeemably evilâ. Because they're secretive and develop closed platforms. Think about that." [...] "One can argue (as I would) that Apple's product secrecy is worth tens of millions of dollars in publicity every year. Or, one can argue that Apple spitefully pissed away even more valuable publicity by shutting down Think Secret. (You'd be wrong, but you can reasonably argue that.) But Kahney, in the course of seven paragraphs in a single article, argues both." [...] "So this is the sort of logic, research, and insight that passes for a Wired cover story today. Does anyone at Wired even read this shit before publishing it?"
Perhaps you should base your world view on facts rather than emotional tirades from Apple's critics to somehow defend why it is that Apple owes you its technology in a subsidized PC in addition to the subsidized iPhone you can already get.
Of course if you bought MM dolls and were selling them with S&M outfits, Disney might sue you. Simple reselling and derived works are different circumstances.
Also, software is sold under a license. If you took photographs of Disney characters and printed it on Tshirts, you'd get sued for copyright violation. If you bought disney merch and resold it in your own store with your brand name on it, you could be sued.
There's a big difference between what consumers can do under the right of first sale and what companies can do. You can't buy scanners bundled with Adobe NFR software and then resell each separately for example. A consumer might get away with it, but if you opened a store and did that, you'd be sued by Adobe for violating their software license.
The problem isn't that Paystar doesn't have a license to use software it is purchasing.
The problem is that Paystar is modifying and reselling software it has neither a license nor any copyright to modify and resell. It also lacks any right to even to distribute Apple's software against the terms of its license.
It's no different than selling software that is licensed as NFR, or selling Windows OEM without hardware, or any number of other uncontested legal mechanisms.
So if Linksys modifies Linux and links in software that it does not publish as the GPL demands, the only problem is that Linksys has violated GNU's (or whoever hold its) copyright?
Even if that is your argument, how could it possibly be that Paystar has no copyright issue involved with taking Mac OS X, making changes, and reselling it as a derivation? Even if you don't believe in EULA restrictions, Paystar is volating Apple's copyright by selling Apple's software as its own.
If I were to start selling PCs running Windows using OEM licenses I acquired, made changes to how Windows works, and began selling them as Mojave PCs, Microsoft would have both an IP licensing case and a copyright infringement case against me.
Just because you want a white box Mac doesn't mean the legal system doesn't exist.
SCO claimed IBM owed it money for performing work on Linux that SCO claimed should somehow enrich SCO, despite SCO having not done anything to deserve it.
Paystar claimed Apple owed it money for performing work on Mac OS X that Paystar claimed should somehow enrich Paystar, despite Paystar having not done anything to deserve it.
Now ask yourself, why are you rooting for Paystar?
Your argument would have more weight if you stated one.
What are these "horrid tactics," licensing software for less than Microsoft does? Trying to get iTunes users to try Safari on Windows? Releasing software updates faster than most rivals? Processing hundreds of vulnerability reports within a couple months? Lay it on the line if you have a grief, don't just suggest evil lurking were none does.
Bad example, as the Xserve costs pretty much what a comparable server from Dell costs, it just includes a Server OS. Your Dell server needs a separate license for Windows Server. When you add in CALs, an Exchange/file server can easily cost more in software than it does in hardware.
I did a comparison last year and found that a Dell PowerEdge with similar specs to the Xserve cost less than 10% more:
Dell $6506 vs Apple $5495
but when you add in Windows Server, Exchange Standard, and the required CALs to support 100 users, the Dell ends up well over $10,000 more. The Xserve comes with an unlimited license to Mac OS X Server.
Dell $17,206 vs Apple $5495.
I'm sure you can spec out a DIY PC box that saves you a few hundred in hardware, but you can't make Windows server licensing cost less.
Of course, you can also use Linux or other free software, but if that was your intent, you don't need to steal Apple's software in the first place. Even so, Apple's Xserve hardware is attractive enough that buyers do get it and install YDL.
Also keep in mind that if Paystar could legally dismiss Apple's license terms simply on the basis of demanding that it has some sort of moral right to make unfettered profits from another's work without respecting the owner's license, it also means the GLP can be dismissed by any corporation who doesn't want to follow it because they think they can make more profits ignoring it.
So Tivo, Linksys, Motorola, etc similarly could continue to ignore the GPL and use Linux code without opening it up.
Careful what you wish for in your moment of greed, you might get it.
Yes, and next sue Disney for having an immoral and illegal monopoly over licensing Mickey Mouse merchandise.
Surely the "moral thing" to do is just let the Chinese clone everything in America so you can bask in the glow of buying a 99 cent version of everything at Walmart thanks to slave labor.
The fact that five people found you insightful makes me sad.
Take a closer look at your list of Apple failures:
Apple didn't sell the Bandai Pippin, which is why it was the Bandai Pippin and not the Apple Pippin. Bandai licensed a Mac reference design and failed for a number of reasons.
The Newton was more successful than any other PDA until the much cheaper and much less capable Palm Pilot came out. The PDA market was impossible for Palm to sustain and WinCE hadn't been able to do anything with it either. In ten years, the global market for PDAs is at 680,000 units per quarter and dropped 50% year over year, according to Gartner.
The Cube was a luxury PC shipped right as the dotcom bubble popped.
Now look at the iPhone: highly publicized reception problems and third party app instability. Wow, fresh territory for a mobile phone huh? At the same time, Apple has 79% of its users claiming to be very satisfied. Even RIM's BlackBerry only gets around 50%.
Apple is selling the iPhone 3G hand over fist. It's releasing regular updates, and promises additional fixes next month.
Compare that to Microsoft, which plans to release the next Windows Mobile 7 at the end of 2009 (!).
The industry is full of analysts who desperately need to contain the iPhone's success for their clients. It should come as no surprise that "Nomura analyst Richard Windsor" is repeating his claim from last year that there will "possibly" be a massive recall of iPhones due to some plausible-sounding technical issue that does not add up.
Last year it was a faulty heat-sensing touch layer that didn't even exist. Now it's the Infineon 3G chipset that works fine in Samsung phones.
The iPhone has collected a group of telco stooges fronting for Verizon, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson that make Windows Enthusiasts Rob Enderle, Paul Thurrott, and Mike Elgan look amateurs.
Yes I know what you mean. I haven't drank beer since 1984 either. I shotgunned a six pack of Animal Beer and I can't imagine trying a real beer today because of that bad experience at 11.
Also sex. I had a bad experience in 1984, and swore it off.
Also breathing. My family ran over a skunk while on vacation, and it smelled so bad I just stopped breathing.
I hate beer, sex, and breathing now. I can't imagine ever revisiting those decisions again. But the IIc I really liked.
How would the iPhone materially benefit from using IPv6 in the near term? There currently isn't much you can do beyond searching Google and looking at some "IPv6 only!!" content.
Being able to BTMM and share files and VNC and stream iTunes might be cool at some point.
Interestingly, Apple's AirPort Extreme/Time Capsule firmware does support IPv6 as local-link only, an IPv6 node, or tunnel to IPv6. It also includes an IPv6 firewall supporting incoming IPSec authentication and Teredo tunnels (to get through NAT).
Apple owns more than 10% of the retail WiFi N router market according to NPD.
Mac OS X, XP and Vista all support IPv6, but having support in the router is the important part. Enabling a significant percentage of users to flip on IPv6 and tunnel right through their legacy ISP is already possible. IPv6 just needs a killer app.
How about authenticated web apps? IPv6 secures traffic from the user to the cloud. That's something Apple has reason to push with MobileMe: "look at us, we have IPv6 security."
Look at what Apple's doing with Back To My Mac to support authenticated connections using Wide-Area Bonjour Dynamic DNS lookups. This could be done via IPv6 using direct addressing. Apple will end up selling more routers, MM subscriptions and IPv6 will get its foot in the door for others to use.
QT is not a "monster plugin" in terms of raping open standards and pillaging the web. You might consider it a heavy plugin technology by size, but again, the argument that software can't be more than a few megabytes belongs in 1998 with AOL CDs. Consumers don't have any trouble downloading QT with iTunes for their iPods. I clearly defined what I meant by Flash being a terrible plugin, and was not addressing that it takes too long to download. Flash is bad because it's bad, not because its big. Silverlight is just as bad, but it's false suggestion of being "open" makes it deceptively bad, which is even worse.
"Microsoft finally stopped allowing Quicktime to take control of formats."
Yes Microsoft began allowing users to chose their preferred software handlers years ago related to the monopoly consent decree (the portions it obeyed). You really are from 1998 aren't you?
I am familiar with the fact that Windows users like to blame Apple for their problems. Paul Thurrott recently complained that MobileMe/iTunes can't sync with Vista's Windows Calendar, forgetting that Microsoft's own ActiveSync can't either. He also complained that Apple didn't solve a number of problems in Outlook and Exchange ActiveSync for Microsoft.
Your claim that IE didn't work with QT and therefore it must be Apple's fault can be challenged by historical precedent recorded in the Monopoly trial proceedings that proved Microsoft purposefully bjorked QuickTime's ability to play back media types, including media types QT could play and Windows couldn't. So it's your guessing against court document proof as to who might be to blame for QT not working under Windows.
Personally, I wouldn't trust Microsoft as far as I can throw a PC, which is at least several feet, especially if we're talking about laptop.
Silverlight isn't "open" in any useful sense. It's a compiled platform that derails the web and W3C standards to erect a new way to deliver the web in a copycat to Flash: a closed binary presentation.
I'm glad you agree on my Office analogy. Clearly we're seeing the same reality and taking different views on it. That's a functional argument, good for us.
"Save as web app" is a feature in Safari 4. Mac users can use Fluid.app today.
QT web video is presented using a JavaScript controller to abstract away differences between browsers. Not everyone wants to code in a custom QT interface. You can do lots of things with a JS presentation of QT. You can't just drop a QT movie into HTML. I'm not sure how to explain that any further. HTML5 will do the same thing without needing an JS intermediary glue (or a middleware pile of crap like Flash).
QT "breaks" IE's ability to display PNG? Wow, who knew IE could even render PNG?! Hint: you can chose which file formats each plugin renders. It's also not Apple's fault you are using a legacy operating system.
Yes QuickTime is a plugin. JavaScript is a plugin too, as is SVG.
The thing is that they use open file formats. Linux users can play back the kind of H.264/AAC video Apple is promoting with QuickTime, just like they can run JS apps and SVG graphics.
They can't really implement their own Flash/Silverlight however, because both are proprietary platforms that subvert the open HTML web into an closed API with compiled code. That's the point of this threat, if you haven't noticed yet.
You can rack up the "informative" karma by talking about "Steve Jobs and blowjobs," which is real popular with the basement monkeys around here, but the reality is that QT is everywhere because of the iPod and iTunes. It's not 1998 and users aren't unable to download a big plugin. That's also not the reason why Flash sucks today.
Flash is bad because it's a proprietary de-opening of the web, not just because it happens to be a plugin. Everything is getting shoved back into a box owned by Adobe, and Adobe has proven that it has no interest in developing a non-crap version of Flash for any platform other than the Windows PC, where it is only decent. Flash = Office. You can talk about how you can do this and that with Flash that you can't yet do with open standards, but that's like ridiculing OpenOffice for not being able to do some esoteric thing than Excel can, and demanding that everyone just hop into the Microsoft cuddle puddle.
Again, Apple doesn't develop QT outside of the Mac or WinPC either, but QT plays back open video content, so Apple doesn't need to. If Apple were promoting Sorrenson Video or some other proprietary codec (again, 1998), then it would be closer to the problem of Flash's closed apps that not only require the Flash runtime, but can't be re-implemented without patent threats flying, just like Silverlight.
Web apps also don't need a special JavaScript runtime. The browser already provides that, and you can already save them as freestanding apps using a third party tool. Apple is adding that ability to the next Safari as well.
My point about using JS to present web video is that Flash is not needed to present player controls prior to the completion of HTML5. I'm sure you're aware that HTML5 doesn't natively play back video itself either. In most cases, users would be using QuickTime to do that. Packing up your video in a Flash shell is just a step back into the past.
Perhaps you should just stick to talking about technology and leave the homosexual fantasy stuff about CEOs to Digg.
Slashdot Mirror
More ridiculousness.
Apple didn't "brick" iPhones, it warned users who had modified their phone firmware that installing updated software could result in a phone set that no longer worked because the tampered firmware was not compatible with higher level software on the phone. If you're not aware, tampering with firmware on devices may result in their failure to operate as expected. Blaming Apple in such a circumstance is the same absurdist garbage of irresponsible neanderthals.
You stuffed the phrase "hateful propaganda" into my mouth. I said it was "a wildly problematic rant/ad for his book" and that "Kahney has a loose grasp of reality and contradicts himself repeatedly."
Stick with facts; don't get all emotional and use over the top language as a substitute for having a point. Kahney does write gushy love letter bullshit, but it's also laced with absurdist insinuations of "evil." It's certainly not worth reading, and does not deserve being the basis of your worldview.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but when you equate Microsoft's behaviors with Apple's you are comparing being emotionally offended with a being the victim of a crime. My comments are only intended to separate fantasy from reality for you.
Apple's secret "Back to My Mac" push behind IPv6
If you buy a Potter book (and please don't just on my account), and then rewrite the ending to please a given audience, and then sell it as the work of the Potter author, you are not operating a book store, but rather violating copyright.
Paystar is not just bundling Mac OS X retail boxes with PCs. That would be somewhat grey area because the user would be violating their license with Apple to install it on Paystar's PC, but it would not be illegal because Apple can't restrict resale of its retail box.
Paystar is violating the license it acquired when the bought the box by installing it on their PC, and is further modifying it (because installing Leopard on a PC requires modification), a direct and obvious violation of copyright.
Apple is not taking action against users who buy and install Leopard on their own PC, just as you describe that Microsoft doesn't care about petty one-off license things (although Microsoft will kill your PC in a heartbeat if it suspects you have not paid for a valid license).
However, allowing Paystar to represent that it is selling a functional equivalent to an Apple Mac would be more than lost money for Apple, it would be a brand smear and potentially expose Apple to liability. Hackers at home don't expect Mac OS X to run flawlessly on whatever random hardware they decide to use, but some small business or litigious retired couple that buys a Paystar PC being marketed as a cheap Mac will at some point demand that Apple solve their problems because they think they have a legal license. Also, all of Paystar's customers will have the impression that any problems they have are the fault of Apple, which is why companies choose no to do business with other companies they do not want to be associated with.
Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits
Except that when you represent another's work as your own after making a derivation of it, nor can you present a modified work as being the work of another party. In neither case are you simply "reselling it." You are modifying it for resale as a new work. This is particularly problematic if the changes you make have the likely outcome of making the other party's work look faulty.
Apple does not even sell Mac OS X "at a full retail price," it licenses it as an upgrade for running on (and only on) Mac hardware. It's find if you don't like that, but that doesn't give you commercial rights to pirate it.
You can't buy a Madonna CD, remix it, burn it to CD-R and resell it as a Madonna album, even if you buy a copy for every copy you sell. That is still copyright violation, because Madonna had the right to decide what is sold as her work.
You also can't buy a CD (which is licensed for individual use, as CDs are), and broadcast it on your radio station. You also can't buy a DVD and play it in your own theater. Those are licensing violations.
The fact that you aren't aware of how licensing works doesn't make you a suitable arbitrator of how one company can reuse the work of another.
"Breach of contract" implies the presence of a contract. Again, you seem to be assuming that Apple has an implied contract to sell Mac OS X to anyone who wants to sell derivations of it to enhance the value of their hardware. That is not the case.
Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits
So you're saying Apple should grant cloners the right to inject code into the Mac OS X kernel and then pass it off as being a low cost Mac OS X?
Do you think pissed off customers would sue Paystar, or Apple? Here's a hint: Apple has money.
Incidentally, does Microsoft allow OEMs to willy nilly modify the Vista kernel and represent a derivative product as being Vista?
Does Linux allow people to modify the kernel and represent the resulting product as being the work of Linus?
Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits
Except that Sony's junkware doesn't remove copy protection from and recompile the kernel of Windows in order to bypass not being granted an OEM license.
Additionally, Sony has an OEM license from Microsoft.
If Apple granted PC makers the right to license its software, and then punished specific licensees (and charged them extra licensing fees) for advertising that they also sold their own PCs with Linux or OS/2 or some other competitors' software, then you might have some correlation with how Microsoft does its business. That could be argued to be anti-competitive and a restraint of free trade
However, Apple has no moral obligation to enrich Paystar, nor any moral obligation that forces it to license its technology to third parties.
Apple does have a software copyright that protects it from having third parties represent that Apple's software is running as intended on their PCs, particularly when Paystar's PCs make Mac OS X look slow, problematic, unstable, and expose users to data loss or other problems that could easily expose Apple to liability.
If Apple can get sued for the iPhone 3G not working where 3G service is unavailable, do you think Apple could be sued for allowing Paystar to offer an Implied Warranty of Fitness for a Particular Purpose, obligating Apple to maintain responsibility for developing custom drivers and support for whatever hardware Paystar can cobble together?
Apple gets sued now and then, remember?
Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits
First off, it wasn't an explicit analogy, was it?
Paystar is claiming it has rights to modify and distribute Apple's software. It clams Apple owes it a free ride to add value to its PC hardware using Apple's work. Paystar's ridiculous claim infers that it has a right to profit from Apple's work, but has no responsibility to follow Apple's license or respect Apple's copyright.
Copyright gives Apple, not Paystar, the right to decide how to use, sell or distribute its own work.
SCO demanded that it owned the copyright for work done by others, simply because it wanted to charge money for work it had not done. It sued IBM for "interfering with a legitimate business practice" of shaking down Linux users.
Both SCO and Paystar are demanding to profit from work done by others that they have no right to demand.
An analogy would be if I said Paystar is like a car that wants to park on your lawn, and sues to for being upset about it.
Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits
Running Mac OS X on generic PCs requires making changes to the software, including defeating kexts and installing support for your own hardware.
That changes how it works. If it were a matter of buying a Leopard retail box and turning it on and performign an install, why would Paystar even be in the news? Why not just buy a Dell or whatever and then grab a Leopard retail box?
Do you ever stop to think about things?
Is Apple's MobileMe Secure?
Don't confuse Apple with its lawyers. Apple gets sued regularly over frivolous bullshit like Paystar's, so the the company's legal team is a ravenous bunch of sharks.
The Wired sensationalism about lawyers' overstated legalese asking not to get unsolicited idea submissions outside of the "sign away your rights" web form for feedback is to prevent a case where somebody sends in an idea Apple is already working on, sort of like sending the violated IP to a clean room team. Of course they don't want to get sued, and lawyers overreact to protect their assets.
Microsoft isn't "evil" for bundling software, it violated its consent decree (its agreement with the judge in a legal case) in order to destroy competition. Apple has no consent decree to violate, and has not been charged by the US with anti-competitive behaviors. So you're grasping at straws.
Jobs does not own the RIAA's music, so he can only do what they allow him to do. He replaced strong Windows Media DRM from Microsoft with FairPlay DRM that end users can strip off themselves using iTunes burn function. So again, you are being ridiculous.
Apple does not have a moral obligation to hand its IP over to Microsoft just because it did once already in the mid 80s. The "little guy" you are rooting for here is a convicted monopolist. It's like you're complaining about Bernhard Goetz being criminal.
Apple never "forced the installation of Safari," it presented it as a software update. Microsoft presents new versions of its own browser as a software update, on both the Mac (when it did) and Windows. Again, you are being wildly disingenuous.
Linking to Leander Kahney's wildly problematic rant/ad for his book doesn't help your case, because Kahney has a loose grasp of reality and contradicts himself repeatedly.
As John Gruber noted (and thank God, as it spared me from explaining exactly why Kahney is so full of himself):
"Kahney's central premise, insofar as there is a premise, is that Apple has succeeded either despite or because it operates in ways that are contrary to conventional wisdom. [... Kahney says Apple is] "Irredeemably evilâ. Because they're secretive and develop closed platforms. Think about that."
[...]
"One can argue (as I would) that Apple's product secrecy is worth tens of millions of dollars in publicity every year. Or, one can argue that Apple spitefully pissed away even more valuable publicity by shutting down Think Secret. (You'd be wrong, but you can reasonably argue that.) But Kahney, in the course of seven paragraphs in a single article, argues both."
[...]
"So this is the sort of logic, research, and insight that passes for a Wired cover story today. Does anyone at Wired even read this shit before publishing it?"
Perhaps you should base your world view on facts rather than emotional tirades from Apple's critics to somehow defend why it is that Apple owes you its technology in a subsidized PC in addition to the subsidized iPhone you can already get.
How Leander Kahney Got Everything Wrong by Being an Irredeemable Jackass
Is Apple's MobileMe Secure?
Of course if you bought MM dolls and were selling them with S&M outfits, Disney might sue you. Simple reselling and derived works are different circumstances.
Also, software is sold under a license. If you took photographs of Disney characters and printed it on Tshirts, you'd get sued for copyright violation. If you bought disney merch and resold it in your own store with your brand name on it, you could be sued.
There's a big difference between what consumers can do under the right of first sale and what companies can do. You can't buy scanners bundled with Adobe NFR software and then resell each separately for example. A consumer might get away with it, but if you opened a store and did that, you'd be sued by Adobe for violating their software license.
Is Apple's MobileMe Secure?
The problem isn't that Paystar doesn't have a license to use software it is purchasing.
The problem is that Paystar is modifying and reselling software it has neither a license nor any copyright to modify and resell. It also lacks any right to even to distribute Apple's software against the terms of its license.
It's no different than selling software that is licensed as NFR, or selling Windows OEM without hardware, or any number of other uncontested legal mechanisms.
Is Apple's MobileMe Secure?
So if Linksys modifies Linux and links in software that it does not publish as the GPL demands, the only problem is that Linksys has violated GNU's (or whoever hold its) copyright?
Even if that is your argument, how could it possibly be that Paystar has no copyright issue involved with taking Mac OS X, making changes, and reselling it as a derivation? Even if you don't believe in EULA restrictions, Paystar is volating Apple's copyright by selling Apple's software as its own.
If I were to start selling PCs running Windows using OEM licenses I acquired, made changes to how Windows works, and began selling them as Mojave PCs, Microsoft would have both an IP licensing case and a copyright infringement case against me.
Just because you want a white box Mac doesn't mean the legal system doesn't exist.
Is Apple's MobileMe Secure?
Look at the facts again:
SCO claimed IBM owed it money for performing work on Linux that SCO claimed should somehow enrich SCO, despite SCO having not done anything to deserve it.
Paystar claimed Apple owed it money for performing work on Mac OS X that Paystar claimed should somehow enrich Paystar, despite Paystar having not done anything to deserve it.
Now ask yourself, why are you rooting for Paystar?
What's Next from Apple: New iPods Sept 22, iPhone OS 2.1, iTunes 8.0
Your argument would have more weight if you stated one.
What are these "horrid tactics," licensing software for less than Microsoft does? Trying to get iTunes users to try Safari on Windows? Releasing software updates faster than most rivals? Processing hundreds of vulnerability reports within a couple months? Lay it on the line if you have a grief, don't just suggest evil lurking were none does.
What's Next from Apple: New iPods Sept 22, iPhone OS 2.1, iTunes 8.0
Bad example, as the Xserve costs pretty much what a comparable server from Dell costs, it just includes a Server OS. Your Dell server needs a separate license for Windows Server. When you add in CALs, an Exchange/file server can easily cost more in software than it does in hardware.
I did a comparison last year and found that a Dell PowerEdge with similar specs to the Xserve cost less than 10% more:
Dell $6506 vs Apple $5495
but when you add in Windows Server, Exchange Standard, and the required CALs to support 100 users, the Dell ends up well over $10,000 more. The Xserve comes with an unlimited license to Mac OS X Server.
Dell $17,206 vs Apple $5495.
I'm sure you can spec out a DIY PC box that saves you a few hundred in hardware, but you can't make Windows server licensing cost less.
Of course, you can also use Linux or other free software, but if that was your intent, you don't need to steal Apple's software in the first place. Even so, Apple's Xserve hardware is attractive enough that buyers do get it and install YDL.
Apple's Open Calendar Server vs Microsoft Exchange
Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?
Also keep in mind that if Paystar could legally dismiss Apple's license terms simply on the basis of demanding that it has some sort of moral right to make unfettered profits from another's work without respecting the owner's license, it also means the GLP can be dismissed by any corporation who doesn't want to follow it because they think they can make more profits ignoring it.
So Tivo, Linksys, Motorola, etc similarly could continue to ignore the GPL and use Linux code without opening it up.
Careful what you wish for in your moment of greed, you might get it.
Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?
Yes, and next sue Disney for having an immoral and illegal monopoly over licensing Mickey Mouse merchandise.
Surely the "moral thing" to do is just let the Chinese clone everything in America so you can bask in the glow of buying a 99 cent version of everything at Walmart thanks to slave labor.
The fact that five people found you insightful makes me sad.
Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?
I am compelled to point out that the premise of Google's Android being the "DOS of smartphones" was examined in:
Will Google's Android Play DOS to Appleâ(TM)s iPhone?
Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?
Take a closer look at your list of Apple failures:
Apple didn't sell the Bandai Pippin, which is why it was the Bandai Pippin and not the Apple Pippin. Bandai licensed a Mac reference design and failed for a number of reasons.
The Newton was more successful than any other PDA until the much cheaper and much less capable Palm Pilot came out. The PDA market was impossible for Palm to sustain and WinCE hadn't been able to do anything with it either. In ten years, the global market for PDAs is at 680,000 units per quarter and dropped 50% year over year, according to Gartner.
The Cube was a luxury PC shipped right as the dotcom bubble popped.
Is the MacBook Air Another Cube?
Now look at the iPhone: highly publicized reception problems and third party app instability. Wow, fresh territory for a mobile phone huh? At the same time, Apple has 79% of its users claiming to be very satisfied. Even RIM's BlackBerry only gets around 50%.
Apple is selling the iPhone 3G hand over fist. It's releasing regular updates, and promises additional fixes next month.
Compare that to Microsoft, which plans to release the next Windows Mobile 7 at the end of 2009 (!).
Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?
The industry is full of analysts who desperately need to contain the iPhone's success for their clients. It should come as no surprise that "Nomura analyst Richard Windsor" is repeating his claim from last year that there will "possibly" be a massive recall of iPhones due to some plausible-sounding technical issue that does not add up.
Last year it was a faulty heat-sensing touch layer that didn't even exist. Now it's the Infineon 3G chipset that works fine in Samsung phones.
The iPhone has collected a group of telco stooges fronting for Verizon, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson that make Windows Enthusiasts Rob Enderle, Paul Thurrott, and Mike Elgan look amateurs.
Inside the iPhone 3G dropped call complaints
Yes I know what you mean. I haven't drank beer since 1984 either. I shotgunned a six pack of Animal Beer and I can't imagine trying a real beer today because of that bad experience at 11.
Also sex. I had a bad experience in 1984, and swore it off.
Also breathing. My family ran over a skunk while on vacation, and it smelled so bad I just stopped breathing.
I hate beer, sex, and breathing now. I can't imagine ever revisiting those decisions again. But the IIc I really liked.
Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Appleâ(TM)s iPhone?
How would the iPhone materially benefit from using IPv6 in the near term? There currently isn't much you can do beyond searching Google and looking at some "IPv6 only!!" content.
Being able to BTMM and share files and VNC and stream iTunes might be cool at some point.
Apple's secret "Back to My Mac" push behind IPv6
IPv6 uses IPSec.
MobileMe uses IPSec to sync with the desktop.
What I'm saying is that it would make sense for Apple to push IPSec IPv6 connections to its web apps to provide the same level of security.
Interestingly, Apple's AirPort Extreme/Time Capsule firmware does support IPv6 as local-link only, an IPv6 node, or tunnel to IPv6. It also includes an IPv6 firewall supporting incoming IPSec authentication and Teredo tunnels (to get through NAT).
Apple owns more than 10% of the retail WiFi N router market according to NPD.
Mac OS X, XP and Vista all support IPv6, but having support in the router is the important part. Enabling a significant percentage of users to flip on IPv6 and tunnel right through their legacy ISP is already possible. IPv6 just needs a killer app.
How about authenticated web apps? IPv6 secures traffic from the user to the cloud. That's something Apple has reason to push with MobileMe: "look at us, we have IPv6 security."
Look at what Apple's doing with Back To My Mac to support authenticated connections using Wide-Area Bonjour Dynamic DNS lookups. This could be done via IPv6 using direct addressing. Apple will end up selling more routers, MM subscriptions and IPv6 will get its foot in the door for others to use.
Will the iPhone Meet its Match from a Modern Day DOS?
QT is not a "monster plugin" in terms of raping open standards and pillaging the web. You might consider it a heavy plugin technology by size, but again, the argument that software can't be more than a few megabytes belongs in 1998 with AOL CDs. Consumers don't have any trouble downloading QT with iTunes for their iPods. I clearly defined what I meant by Flash being a terrible plugin, and was not addressing that it takes too long to download. Flash is bad because it's bad, not because its big. Silverlight is just as bad, but it's false suggestion of being "open" makes it deceptively bad, which is even worse.
"Microsoft finally stopped allowing Quicktime to take control of formats."
Yes Microsoft began allowing users to chose their preferred software handlers years ago related to the monopoly consent decree (the portions it obeyed). You really are from 1998 aren't you?
I am familiar with the fact that Windows users like to blame Apple for their problems. Paul Thurrott recently complained that MobileMe/iTunes can't sync with Vista's Windows Calendar, forgetting that Microsoft's own ActiveSync can't either. He also complained that Apple didn't solve a number of problems in Outlook and Exchange ActiveSync for Microsoft.
Your claim that IE didn't work with QT and therefore it must be Apple's fault can be challenged by historical precedent recorded in the Monopoly trial proceedings that proved Microsoft purposefully bjorked QuickTime's ability to play back media types, including media types QT could play and Windows couldn't. So it's your guessing against court document proof as to who might be to blame for QT not working under Windows.
Personally, I wouldn't trust Microsoft as far as I can throw a PC, which is at least several feet, especially if we're talking about laptop.
I never claimed QuickTime wasn't a plugin.
Silverlight isn't "open" in any useful sense. It's a compiled platform that derails the web and W3C standards to erect a new way to deliver the web in a copycat to Flash: a closed binary presentation.
I'm glad you agree on my Office analogy. Clearly we're seeing the same reality and taking different views on it. That's a functional argument, good for us.
"Save as web app" is a feature in Safari 4. Mac users can use Fluid.app today.
QT web video is presented using a JavaScript controller to abstract away differences between browsers. Not everyone wants to code in a custom QT interface. You can do lots of things with a JS presentation of QT. You can't just drop a QT movie into HTML. I'm not sure how to explain that any further. HTML5 will do the same thing without needing an JS intermediary glue (or a middleware pile of crap like Flash).
QT "breaks" IE's ability to display PNG? Wow, who knew IE could even render PNG?! Hint: you can chose which file formats each plugin renders. It's also not Apple's fault you are using a legacy operating system.
Yes QuickTime is a plugin. JavaScript is a plugin too, as is SVG.
The thing is that they use open file formats. Linux users can play back the kind of H.264/AAC video Apple is promoting with QuickTime, just like they can run JS apps and SVG graphics.
They can't really implement their own Flash/Silverlight however, because both are proprietary platforms that subvert the open HTML web into an closed API with compiled code. That's the point of this threat, if you haven't noticed yet.
You can rack up the "informative" karma by talking about "Steve Jobs and blowjobs," which is real popular with the basement monkeys around here, but the reality is that QT is everywhere because of the iPod and iTunes. It's not 1998 and users aren't unable to download a big plugin. That's also not the reason why Flash sucks today.
Flash is bad because it's a proprietary de-opening of the web, not just because it happens to be a plugin. Everything is getting shoved back into a box owned by Adobe, and Adobe has proven that it has no interest in developing a non-crap version of Flash for any platform other than the Windows PC, where it is only decent. Flash = Office. You can talk about how you can do this and that with Flash that you can't yet do with open standards, but that's like ridiculing OpenOffice for not being able to do some esoteric thing than Excel can, and demanding that everyone just hop into the Microsoft cuddle puddle.
Again, Apple doesn't develop QT outside of the Mac or WinPC either, but QT plays back open video content, so Apple doesn't need to. If Apple were promoting Sorrenson Video or some other proprietary codec (again, 1998), then it would be closer to the problem of Flash's closed apps that not only require the Flash runtime, but can't be re-implemented without patent threats flying, just like Silverlight.
Web apps also don't need a special JavaScript runtime. The browser already provides that, and you can already save them as freestanding apps using a third party tool. Apple is adding that ability to the next Safari as well.
My point about using JS to present web video is that Flash is not needed to present player controls prior to the completion of HTML5. I'm sure you're aware that HTML5 doesn't natively play back video itself either. In most cases, users would be using QuickTime to do that. Packing up your video in a Flash shell is just a step back into the past.
Perhaps you should just stick to talking about technology and leave the homosexual fantasy stuff about CEOs to Digg.