gibwell

What's wrong with Dilger? He is unashamedly opinionated, but he is a far more professional reporter of facts than the vast majority of mainstream outlets.

You don't think refinement of failed products into wildly successful ones is a creative activity?

> The market is broader than just the end-users of phones. Share markets, patents, deals with collaborators (such as network operators, music companies), and bribes (mostly in less developed countries) are just as much a part of the market as end-users.

Please explain how any of this applies to Apple's business. At it stands it sounds like innuendo.

Well IBM did end up divesting itself of the businesses people expected them to. They just did so in an orderly manner while simultaneously executing a new and very successful strategy.

As for Tomi Ahonen, by the time of that 2011 statement, Nokia's smartphone sales were visibly in precipitous decline. Not their share, but their sales. So Ahonen's statement can only be seen as a statement of faith rather than of confidence.

In these two cases, there were facts to support the predictions, where as in Apple's case all we have are just so stories.

> but they sure are milking it for all it's worth.

Apple are doing nothing different from their competitors with regard to patents.

People are reading this because despite a small market share, Apple is more successful than any other PC, Tablet, or Phone maker.

It's easy to point to rising market share less than one month after an annual product release. If it wasn't rising at that point they'd be in Blackberry territory. Typically, Apple is presented as having a losing strategy, and the current market share in the US is regarded as a anomaly that will quickly be corrected as 'Good Enough' Android phones such as the Nexus series or Galaxy S4 are recognized as being equivalent.

All corporations do this in one way or another, so this is a generic anti-corporate argument. In the case of Apple, it is clearly irrelevant since they have such a tiny market share.

Are you talking about open protocols like Skype, and Google hangouts?

Was she considering an Apple laptop, or an iPad?

Are the educational apps ones for her to use herself, or ones she'll use for teaching kids?

Also, are they apps she already has and wants to keep running, or ones she will buy now that she has the new machine? Finally are they Metro Apps, or traditional windows apps?

He also later founded and ran an Apple competitor that built highly respected computers and a highly respected OS.

Dismissing this person's opinion simply because they don't agree with an unsubstantiated attack on Gruber makes no sense.

Do you know anything about the author?

The arguments for Apple's failure seem to focus on what Apple isn't doing, rather than what it is doing.

E.g.

- they aren't establishing or milking a monopoly - they aren't making commodity hardware - they aren't engaging in predatory pricing

What these things have in common is that they are easy to understand.

The general negative commentary seems to be of the form "We can understand what everyone else is doing, but we don't understand what Apple is doing, therefore Apple must be doing nothing."

There's nothing new about this. The only difference when Steve Jobs was alive was that they could say 'We don't understand what Apple is doing, but Steve Jobs is a genius so that explains their success."

I don't think you are contradicting the original point.

Nobody is saying that the android team sat around in a smoke filled room plotting about how it could be all about ads. Once Android was at Google, obviously most people would be focused on making a successful platform first and foremost.

Nevertheless, the reason for Google as a whole to own such a platform is to protect its revenues streams.

Google's revenue streams rely on access to data about user behavior.

Android's strategic purpose was to ensure that Google controlled the platform so that the separate goal of capturing user information would not be threatened by other corporations.

I'm sure you're right about the motivations of many of the people within Google being essentially, 'to build a better platform'.

I don't believe the idea that this was an entirely altruistic goal.

I don't think what you are saying contradicts the overall idea that the underlying reason for Google to invest in Android was to protect it's access to data about users against other corporations.

I.e. Many people at Google were motivated to create a good platform. But the reason for creating a platform at all was fundamentally to make sure that it was Google's good platform. The fact that Google requires access data about customer behavior for it's business model can't just be washed away by pointing at the motivations of the people tasked with making Android successful - a lower level goal.

I'm not calling this license free. I'm just pointing out that the FSF's definition of free is a very specific one of many.

The FSF has a very narrow definition of freedom.

It's a shame that they don't mention that the purpose of Android is to safeguard Google's access to this information.

Did you not notice that the GM had been released? I think it was mentioned in the press...

So you're saying you didn't know the GM had been released?

You locked yourself out by deliberately installing a time limited piece of software and then neglecting to update it when a complete version was offered to you for free.

You aren't being treated like a criminal on parole. You're being treated like a software developer who understands how to handle pre-release software.

Most users would do so without really understating what they were doing. As Google discovered through interviews on the street, most people don't understand what a browser is.

The pundits make money by stirring up negativity, not by informing people.

I'm sure this can't be what you intended, but it sounds as though you just said that developing something like the iPhone is a matter of routine for companies like HTC, Samsung and Nokia, and that Apple only found it hard because of poor technique.

I routinely now encounter non-tech literate friends who are experiencing trouble doing things like printing, or working with attachments, that they understood how to do using their native OS, and don't understand why things are different.

It always turns out to be that they are using Chrome.

You seem to claim to understand the law better than the judge.

If the jury didn't agree that the prior art was clear, then the prior art obviously was not clear. So really you're just saying that you don't agree with the jury.

You also seem to be saying that Samsung should be allowed to abuse the court process as a way to steal secrets because Apple sued them, even though Apple won the case.

I'm sorry, but you are defending Samsung.

Samsung has been sanctioned for intentional destruction of evidence, found guilty of being part of a price fixing cartel, and repeatedly guilty of other price fixing crimes, as well as of bribing officials. They have also been discovered to be astroturfing forums, and falsifying benchmarks.

Whilst you're right that the judge has yet to rule, in light of their past behavior, I find your willingness to construct a scenario in which they are innocent, despite it being in contradiction of the evidence we do currently have, to be bizarrely generous.

"to prove to Nokia that he knew the confidential terms of the Apple-Nokia license, Dr. Ahn recited the terms of the license, and even went so far as to tell Nokia that 'all information leaks.'"

So no, since they acknowledged it as a leak it's not possible that Samsung thought it was entitled to the information.

[edit: response to ad-hominem removed now that the ad-hominem has been silently deleted]

This issue has nothing to do with whether patent law is correct or not. It's about Samsung obtaining documents illegally.

At least you are in full agreement that lying and cheating are pervasive ethics at Samsung.