back to article 'What was Google going to do, force Apple to change its mind?'

This was the week when complaints about Apple's latest Jesus-mobe continued - but that didn't stop upwards of five million people forking out for it or queues forming in Blighty and elsewhere on launch day. The 'maps app is crap' saga rumbled on as folks appealed to Google to save them from the random inaccuracy of Apple's …

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  1. Alan Denman

    Apple business is in owning everything.

    Apple certainly seem to hate to do standard business with anyone.

    Their vulture fund means whoever they take over will cease to exist in the normal sense.

    These will no doubt turn into another good buy considering the Apple consumers are quite famous for their giving. Those, retired from laptop orders, finger print scanners are next for those lucky lucky premium Apple users.

    They own you and you can be adored by those fellow users if you buy Apple.

    1. tony2heads
      Devil

      Apple business model

      Clearly based on the Necromonger Way

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Well

      Eventually my village will appear on the Maps

      The connector, if faulty will be replaced by Apple

      A protective film will stop the scratches

      A quality aluminium finish is much better than plastic glossy white or blue polycarbonate.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "Eventually..."

        Ah, yes...

        No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should

  2. Turtle

    Generosity

    "As much as I like Ubuntu, this feature is going to make me switch back to Debian and donate $10 a year to them."

    Generosity.

    There are some people who think that the world is full of fools who will do anything for the sake of a ten-dollar bill. Do you think that Shuttleworth is losing sleep because he is brooding over the possibility of that ten-dollar bill going to Debian instead of Ubuntu?...

    1. Ru
      Meh

      Re: Generosity

      Voting with your feet and with your wallet is pretty much the only power the consumer has.

      What would you suggest instead? Breaking into Fortress Shuttleworth and installing Vista on everything?

      1. Panzerbjorn
        Go

        Re: Generosity

        Vista? No.

        windows ME of course :-D

        1. Wensleydale Cheese
          Thumb Up

          Re: Generosity

          windows ME of course :-D

          Now that's cruel.

          But I like it.

        2. Euripides Pants

          Re: Generosity

          Vista? No.

          windows ME? No.

          Microsoft Bob. YES!

          1. Andy Scott

            Re: Generosity

            Microsoft Bob! Now that's cruel

      2. Turtle

        @Ru: Re: Generosity

        "Voting with your feet and with your wallet is pretty much the only power the consumer has."

        That's true, of course, but not quite my point, which was directed at the fact that the guy had to *announce* it, and highlight the fact that "it's, you know, Mark, it's ten bucks! If you don't change your policies, your not going to get these ten bucks that I will donate to Debian instead! So think about it carefully, Mark, because these ten bucks won't be here forever! I hope I'm making myself very clear, Mark - these ten bucks are yours to gain, or lose!"

        Consumers vote will their feet and/or their wallets, but just like in real, national-scale elections, a single consumer, like a single vote, is worth essentially nothing; they only have value in very large numbers.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "We think it would have been better if they had kept ours."

    But, as reported in many other online tech news sources, Google refused to license their turn-by-turn navigation, leaving Apple at a disadvantage to Android devices. So what were Apple supposed to do?

    1. James Hughes 1

      Re: "We think it would have been better if they had kept ours."

      But WHY did they refuse to licence? Perhaps Apple were unwilling the pay the going rate? I dunno, but why would Google refuse money - must be a really good reason...

    2. fandom

      Re: "We think it would have been better if they had kept ours."

      Apple could have done something radical like releasing an app that just worked.

    3. NomNomNom

      Re: "We think it would have been better if they had kept ours."

      One thing they could have done is build up a rival map solution over many years and kept using google in the meantime...

    4. Dante

      Re: "We think it would have been better if they had kept ours."

      I've read (although I can't remember where) that Google WERE willing to license the turn-by-turn, but Apple refused the conditions - I think it was greater brand visibility and *think* deeper API integration.

      1. Test Man
        Go

        Re: "We think it would have been better if they had kept ours."

        Dante - yep I also read this.

        The thing is, Google doesn't licence the turn-by-turn feature (or a few other features like vector-based maps) to ANYONE. Apple would have been the first third-party company to get exclusivity on this, so clearly Google wanted a VERY good set of terms for providing a feature that is not normally licensed out and a feature that is a selling point for their own apps. If Apple didn't like those terms, they have every right to reject - same as Google have every right to set high terms and conditions for a feature that is not licensed out in general.

    5. Tom_

      Re: "We think it would have been better if they had kept ours."

      They were supposed to keep the Google maps app and not supply turn by turn navigation for now.

    6. Midnight

      Re: "We think it would have been better if they had kept ours."

      What was Apple supposed to do? Well, maybe they could have struck a deal with a major consumer GPS manufacturer like TomTom...

      Nah. That would be too complicated.

  4. The Real Loki
    Facepalm

    Apple's arrogance is astounding!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes, they have that arrogance knob turned up to 11.

  5. The FunkeyGibbon
    FAIL

    We have Root

    Nice one Shuttleworth, using spurious logic that says that because Canonical doesn't screw your machine with their uber-power, then surely their partners wouldn't miss-use this data.

    1. SiliconSlick
      Big Brother

      Re: "Erm, we have root."

      No doubt a scary statement. Great attitude... to strike fear and loathing into the minds of your users.

      "We can takeover your computer and add it to the collective Ubuntu hive at _our_ discretion... whether as a member of our botnet or to collect personal information... of course, we are the Borg, so there is no personal information, you _will_ be assimilated, resistence is futile".

      I think I'll stick with "the Federation"/Fedora.

  6. ScissorHands
    Thumb Down

    Sratched anodising on iPhone5

    Meanwhile, most Nokia N8s only have scuffs on the protruding camera module, after two years of heavy use. Yeah, totally the buyer's fault: "I just looked at it and it scratched itself!"

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Shuttleworth thinks searches themselves aren't sensitive as long as they're anonymized?

    "We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. "

    So lawyer searches hard-disk for some celebrity client's secret paternity test, engineer searches for schematics for some sooper-secret new stealth aircraft project, diplomatic searches for some secret peace deal with the Taliban, etc, etc.

    And it's supposed to be fine because those very sensitive searches are going off to Shuttleworth's server, before being passed to Amazon?

    And some people are fine with this?

    1. a cynic writes...

      Re: Shuttleworth thinks searches themselves aren't sensitive as long as they're anonymized?

      And some people are fine with this?

      Well I'm not. I'll stick on 12.04 for now and move over to Debian when I can be bothered.

    2. Midnight

      Re: Shuttleworth thinks searches themselves aren't sensitive as long as they're anonymized?

      "So lawyer stores some celebrity client's secret paternity test on his own PC which he installed and configured himself without even considering the security implications, engineer places schematics for some sooper-secret new stealth aircraft project on a computer which is connected to the Internet in any way [...] And some people are fine with this?"

      Maybe I just spend too much time around paranoid people, but where I come from any of those would be grounds for a thorough beating with the Risk-management-bat followed by a long chat with the doors closed involving phrases like "summary termination", "what were you thinking" and "I'm just going to open this drawer..."

      If you're handling those kinds of documents, you do so in a secure way on a secure machine. Sticking a pre-release version of _any_ operating system into the drive and then clicking "OK, OK, OK" has about as much to do with building a secure environment as throwing a pile of sticks into a creek has to do with building a bridge.

  9. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    Ubuntu & Amazon

    Whilst Canonical might hide your identity from Amazon you are still revealing all your search secrets to Canonical. How long before Canonical get raided by the US <redacted> agency and made to hand over all search details for Everyone all in :-

    - The interests of National Security

    - Think of the Children

    - To keep you safe and secure

    etc etc etc

    As I've just had a Chinook fly over this is very appropriate.

  10. lauri_hoefs
    FAIL

    "You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update."

    Well I certainly don't!

    Updates constantly f'''ing up something, braking compatibility, or making undocumented changes to config files, were the main reasons I completely dropped Ubuntu and its derivatives.

    You could never be sure that your computer would boot and function normally after any minor update, let alone dist-upgrade...

  11. Turtle

    @lauri_hoefs

    "You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update."

    "Well I certainly don't!"

    Best rejoinder I've read in months!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    no news is reg news

    Hmmm... a reg article made almost entirely of other people's quotes, including the title. So the news here is... other people's news?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update

    I did, until Unity came along.

  14. A Man from Venus
    Linux

    I was running a Ubuntu LTS on a machine in my cellar until the support ended, I pressed dist update and the machine was rendered unbootable! I won't be spending a lot of energy recovering to Ubuntu for all it's supposed ease of use!

    My other home machines run Gentoo and I think that's the way this one will go too.

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