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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

What made Microsoft so predatory is that they wanted to dominate the market and squash any competitors, and drive everything into a Microsoft monoculture. Apple doesn't act in the same way, and only seems to care about profits and products rather than marketshare. So even if Apple does something that seems incredibly controlling, you don't have to worry, because you can always buy somebody else's product. Microsoft was trying to make it so you couldn't buy anybody else's product.

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Well, while they might seem that way because they are a hardware company, they are incredibly aggressive in that arena. Take the bannings and attempted bannings of Motorola, HTC, and Samsung devices for example. They are definitely trying everything they can to prevent you from buying someone else's product.

Exactly. Apple as great as their products are, have started to resurrect the look/feel lawsuits of the 90s with their patents on trivial things such as how to unlock a phone, having a jump bar, etc.

Sure, but only because they apparently don't have enough non-bullshit, non-FRAND patents with which to play the "IP litigation counter-counter-...-counter strike" game. Apple sucks, but so does every other major player in the "mobile" industry. I could be wrong here, but no counterexamples come to mind.

Can we stop this ridiculous revisionist history.

Slide to unlock was not a common place feature before it came out on the iPhone despite the prevalence of touch screen devices. It is hard to argue against the fact that the implementation was indeed unique at the time.

If you're going to defend Apple, may I suggest that you at least pick ground that is less shaky than slide-to-unlock?

I can say just one thing and clearly demonstrate that it is your history that is revisionist: Neonode N1m

Star Trek had slide to unlock before Apple even made a phone. Star Trek PAD versus the iPad... hmmm

No, they're trying to stop devices they see as copies from entering the market place. They have no way of stopping competing but different things from entering the market. MS did and used it.

You nailed it - I lived under Microsoft's "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" philosophy for more years than I care to remember. Microsoft wasn't just happy being profitable, it only recognized success when it both destroyed the competition and locked alternatives from arising. It was core to their culture.

Apple has always made it very clear that they are quite content having a small slice of the overall market, just as long as they occupied the _best_ part of that market. They tend to be elite snobs, who seem to be fine with 90% of the market running linux netbooks as long as 10% are running Mac Laptops.

Really? Apple are trying very hard to stop you buying an HTC phone.

They're trying to stop copycats. Do you see any lawsuits over the Windows phones?

You haven't been following Apple's lawsuits against Samsung much, have you?

There's a bit of a difference between trying to kill the entire phone industry and suing obvious copycats who don't differentiate their products.

If Netscape has sued MS and won an injunction a lot of people would have cheered. Which brings up the old 'who's most like MS in mobile today?' question...

Microsoft made a netscape clone and gave away the product for free. Google made an iOS clone and gave away the product free.

Sure, but there's an important difference between "giving away one product to sell others" and "using a monopoly position in one market to eliminate competition in another", namely, that the latter is illegal but the former is not. Grey areas? Sure, lots, whence so may lawyers. But IE and IIS were clearly (to regulators, not me) not mere loss-leaders, but prongs of a coordinated response to a perceived threat to Microsoft's PC hegemony.

Besides, Android device manufacturers effectively "pay" Google for Android in search traffic (or reduced revenue share from search traffic).

Besides, Android device manufacturers effectively "pay" Google for Android in search traffic (or reduced revenue share from search traffic).

Actually google pays the android device manufacturers, not the other way around.

And google still manages to make money off of it. They aren't crowding out competitors at a loss in order to twist the screws later.

Are they making money off Android?

From what I've read on some blogs they never give numbers showing their profit or loss from Android, and looking at the situation from the outside I'd think it's more likely they're losing money on it at the moment.

Apparently it became profitable 2 years ago. http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/05/googles-eric-schmidt-says...

>Sure, but there's an important difference between "giving away one product to sell others" and "using a monopoly position in one market to eliminate competition in another"

.... you mean like using a near monopoly in search to finance paying manufacturers to use Android?

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