Cook's 'values' memo shows Apple has lost its soul On the one year anniversary of his appointment as Apple CEO, Tim Cook must be partying especially hard in light of Friday's verdict against Samsung. But if his memo to staff about the verdict is anything to go by, in winning the case Apple has lost its soul. The memo, leaked to 9to5Mac, shows Cook is in no mood to play nice …
You're telling me that the iPhone design was stolen from Windows Mobile? Really? Maybe Windows CE? Symbian? Come on. When the iPhone launched people said it would never catch on because it lacked X, Y and Z. They missed the point: the only advantage Symbian had now was that its age had let it accumulate features. Five years later and Symbian is dead.
Arguably the least interesting feature of OS X is the most obviously copied: the bonkers menu-bar not attached to application blunder carried over from Xerox which has confused people since before I was born.
The triumph of OS X has been its rapid iteration and improvement and introducing APIs and programming structures for animation, graphics and sound processing far faster than Microsoft did. Consider: Apple released four versions of OS X while Microsoft were struggling to create Vista, scooped most of its features, and Apple users saw OS X get faster on the same hardware (assuming they upgraded their graphics cards, admittedly) through much of that period.
Just to clarify:
a) That checklist idea was also what I thought-so I got this at the time as wrong as anyone else...
b) I agree that many of those Symbian features are/were critical for many businesses and proprietary apps; I'm thinking about the consumer perspective here. The iPhone was just a lot better for most consumers than a Symbian phone from the point of view of UI, browser design and screen size, even the day it launched.
Actually the iPhone's design was most directly stolen from the LG Prada.
Meanwhile, Apple stole the iPad design from Roger Fidler of Knight Ridder. This was no coincidence, since apparently the two companies' labs were only "separated by a wall" at the time, and Knight Ridder had been collaborating with Apple on providing content for the ill-fated Newton.
@AnotherNetNarcissist
"So Apple researched, designed, prototyped, engineered, tooled, tested and certified a smartphone in less than 28 days? Right."
You mean 4 months (Sep 2006 - Jan 2007).
And Apple wouldn't have needed to have "designed, prototyped, engineered, tooled, tested and certified" the case, which is the bit Apple copied, and the bit Apple is now fraudulently claiming to have "invented".
I'm a PC user, but I like the OSX's menu bar- it is always in the same place, and you can't overshoot it with the cursor if you mouse doesn't like the surface it's sat on. You can only use one application's menu bar at a time, so I have never gained any utility from being able to see the menu bars on running applications that I'm not focused on- they just take up space. The clock, battery, WLAN signal and volume controls are always visible in OSX, without having to summon the taskbar as you do in Windows. The Windows 7 taskbar is a PITA, since it will often unhide itself for a variety reasons, obscuring any status bars or tools that sit at the bottom of a maximised application window, until such a time as you have dismissed the reason (usually Java Update wanting attention) the taskbar intruded on your work in the first place. Oh, and the OSX menu is not a 'Ribbon'.
Moron... the triumph of OSX was that it`s a GUI they built on top of BSD UNIX.
Apple didn`t even CREATE the core of their `triumphant`OS...
And now they have the gull to gloat over winning over a billion dollars because they patented... a Rectangle with rounded corners...
This entire thing is beyond retarded...
"Moron... the triumph of OSX was that it`s a GUI they built on top of BSD UNIX.
Apple didn`t even CREATE the core of their `triumphant`OS..."
And the reason therefore that BSD is not as widely used as OSX is... ?
Oh, merely Apple marketing, right?
I think we all know who the real "moron" here is.
And OSX under the glossy exterior is FreeBSD.
Just because FreeBSD has an open license doesn't mean Apple didn't take it and use it.
And that glossy exterior? Xerox PARC, my friends. Thats where it all began.
This is the thing. Cook can't morally stand on the shoulders of giants (eg Dennis Ritchie) to gain success then write emails to staff crowing about how using someone else's stuff is bad. Apple was built on using other people's stuff.
"And OSX under the glossy exterior is FreeBSD." No, no it isn't. Still at least you didn't claim its Linux. *Some* of it is based on FreeBSD, the XNU kernel itself is based on the Mach kernel which was developed at Carnegie Mellon.
"Just because FreeBSD has an open license doesn't mean Apple didn't take it and use it."
Nobody has said otherwise.
"And that glossy exterior? Xerox PARC, my friends. Thats where it all began." Nope. Arguably it all began in an article by Vannevar Bush entitled "As We May Think", but kudos should be aimed in the direction at Ivan Sutherland (while at MIT) and Dough Engelbart (while at SRI) for they really are pioneers in the field. It is fair to say that Xerox PARC made a significant contribution, but then so did Apple; hope you are enjoying your overlapping windows and the content that is constantly refreshed as they are moved...
"Anyone who views Apple as anything but another evil company needs their head examined."
Certainly, it's another company, with shareholders and the objective of making a profit, but so are ALL companies.
The companies that are evil are those patent trolls that never invent or make anything of their own but just buy up obscure patents and then make a living by blackmailing companies who can't afford to defend an expensive lawsuit, whether or not there's any merit in the claims.
Apple isn't remotely like that. First, they clearly do invent their own stuff, and manufacturer it, so are using patents in the way they're intended. They're the victm of infinitely more patent claims from people who see a big fat cash cow, and just see dollar signs lighting up in front of their eyes, than they are the aggressor.
you know, Apple got their start making blue boxes, and after being roughed up one night, Steve Jobs decided it would be more fun and profitable to make a computer. first out of the box was a bare board machine. second was nothing less than the all-in-one computer, although the monitor screen and tape drive did not fit in the case. with 16 pure colors and a few more dithered ones.
that provided the financial muscle and industry acceptance to get a view inside Xerox PARC, and the Lisa and Macintosh.
they weren't all just copy, unless you consider using Chuck Peddle's 6502 processor copying.
"If software patents were outlawed, these companies would ***gasp*** have to play on a level playing field."
Right. Because if Apple invests the money and does the work and research to create software features that people want, it is only fair that Samsung and anyone and everyone else be immediately allowed to use those ideas for themselves.
That's "innovation and fairness" at its best, now isn't it?
And summed up her feelings as 'Apple are just scared'. The IBM created, Compaq evolved thing seems to sum up how Apple are doing this wrong. I own a 4S and am typing this on a MacBook Pro, but prefer the South Korean judgement of 'Apple infringed some patents, Samsung infringed some, pay each other some money and be done with it'.
I have Apple kit too, but have just swapped my iPhone for a Lumia 800. I'm also going to think before I buy another computer from Apple, a while back it would have been automatic.
But Samsung really are just a cloner. It says it all that Apple's patents were all software and Samsung's patents were all about boring shit like chips. All of the innovation is in the software, the chips are just the mechanics.
>> Apple's patents were all software and Samsung's patents were all about boring shit like chips.
>> All of the innovation is in the software, the chips are just the mechanics.
> You owe me a new Ignorance-O-Meter. Mine has just exploded.
As ignorant as it seems there is a valid point in what he is saying. You can't (yet) use hardware without a user interface (personally, I'm hoping my off-spring will evolve this ability). So if Apple can get patents on all the most intuitive (and therefore obvious) UI designs, it doesn't matter how good your hardware is, the user experience is going to be crap, and no-one is going to buy it. Hardware patents might be difficult to work around and come up with alternatives, but at least you can generally do so, without it noticeably affecting the end user.
which is harder to design - some simple apps that can be designed with a GUI programming-client or those vastly complex integrated circuits that you dismiss in blissful ignorance
I see your point, but I think you're too quick in dismissing software in relation to hardware. Each need their own skill set, and in either environment you have talent, workers and idiots.
I would not want a hardware engineer near an application design that has to be so user friendly the user can get the best out of it without instructions(*), but I would also not want a coder near hyper efficient hardware design.
What I do want is them talking to each other, either directly or via a team leader who is at home in both worlds. It appears Apple has managed that, which is *seriously* rare but which has propelled them to the top.
AFAIK, Samsung were in the mobile phone business long before Apple, yet the iPhone created a revolution by its usability (and, let's be honest) it's very good marketing. It was also the first time a company managed to force the operators to share the loot, which I personally found the most impressive feat of all - a mobile phone company telling telcos what to do.
I am thus not on the side of Samsung. Not because I'm an Apple fan, but because I'm a fan of what Apple did, in the same way as I was a fan of the Sony Ericsson p1i because it had the best keyboard ever, and the Motorola V3i because it had a form factor that nobody has managed to better since (even though the shiny keyboard and its crappy software rendered it less useful - it was the sheer form factor and hardware that made it stand out).
I respect Samsung as a company that designs solid products - I almost exclusively use Samsung monitors because I don't have to worry about their quality, I know what comes out of the box will always be overqualified for the job and tends to outlive the computer it gets hooked up to, and their phones are electronically pretty sound products too (I'm not enamoured by what Sony makes of it). However, the Samsung phone struck me as a "me too" the moment I saw it, and so did a number of other ones, simply because of the almost identical form factor and the strikingly similar way of operating (although I wonder if the guilty party isn't actually Google with its Android OS).
I can appreciate they want to ride the wave that Apple created, but I think they should not try to pretend it was of their making - that is really what I saw this case to be about.
"Just give a moment's thought to which is harder to design - some simple apps that can be designed with a GUI programming-client or those vastly complex integrated circuits that you dismiss in blissful ignorance"
It can't be that easy, Samsung had to write a 132 page document looking at all of Apple's iPhone software designs in order to copy them: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/126253497/44_iPhone_GalaxyS1_review
It might not be illegal, but it shows which company was doing the actual thinking and which was doing the copying.
'Just give a moment's thought to which is harder to design - some simple apps that can be designed with a GUI programming-client or those vastly complex integrated circuits that you dismiss in blissful ignorance'
Yes but to make them work properly so they don't crash your system is also an art.
While I profoundly, profoundly disagree with this, I think putting technology together is underrated. That's what Apple has done so well: being able to create a completely legacy-free, native platform for smartphones broke a market suffering from serious inertia and interference from carriers, and management-consultant pricing structures that created model names like the Sony Erikson U4410Z. Now you can get a quad-core phone the law of diminishing returns starts to come in (unless you're running bloatware like Android, that is...).
The snag is that it's a riskier market than selling chips. Intel, AMD, ARM and NVidia win whoever makes the best UI. But great platforms take work, and may not get the market share they deserve. Witness webOS, JoliOS, BeOS, Amiga OS, Maemo... A great processor design like x86-64 or PowerPC makes its own statement and can find markets for one-off triumphs of engineering, but a great OS needs market share and years to mature and accumulate its feature set. (OS X took a decade before it could get/licence in-OS Exchange support, for instance.)
" All of the innovation is in the software, the chips are just the mechanics."
You have deservedly received many down votes for that comment, but from the narrow perspective of a phone manufacturer I can see why you think that. Most of the innovation is really done by the SoC provider (Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson, Broadcom etc.) and other component manufacturers in the semiconductor industry. All the phone manufacturer really does is copy a reference design from the SoC manufactuer, stick it in a fancy case, and add a bit of gloss to the software on top (the actual low-level software that makes the thing work under the hood is already provided by the SoC manufacturer). With the advent of AOSP even the UI software layer is little effort these days.
"It says it all that Apple's patents were all software and Samsung's patents were all about boring shit like chips. All of the innovation is in the software, the chips are just the mechanics."
If companies didn't keep pushing forward with chips, we wouldn't have the hardware to support such innovations in software.
Anyway, you should really read up more on Apple and software, right from the beginning. Innovation isn't really what comes to mind (make the effort to read and not make ignorant comments, then you'll understand why). They are good at putting things (that aren't necessarily theirs) in a pretty package and marketing, though.
you need to listen to the mini-AC that wrote the first para and tell the other one to fuck off.
where do you think all this magical software exists?
in the boring chips fuckwit
and are rounded corners really a software feature??
Apple won the case cos it took place in the states where they have the best legal system money can buy. end of
[quote]But Samsung really are just a cloner. It says it all that Apple's patents were all software and Samsung's patents were all about boring shit like chips. All of the innovation is in the software, the chips are just the mechanics.[/quote]
How do you even breathe?
"A friend of mine works for Samsung and summed up her feelings as 'Apple are just scared'."
There's an authoritative opinion. It must be right.
On the other hand, I saw someone with an Apple device waiting for a bus this morning. They didn't seem concerned.
This made Samsung look like a plucky underdog, and will add anger to their 'only pretentious hipsters use iPhones' ads. Apple may feel scared, but they make so much more money than Samsung from selling phones, and it's earned them a billion in damages on top of that. It must be very frustrating to spend years designing the iPhone casing, OS and UI and watch Samsung rush-release a lazy rip-off with the help of an Apple board member, but it makes them seem paranoid.
How do you know that for sure? Johnny Ive said recently that they don't design and develop their products for the money.
Samsung were found to have wilfully infringed on a number of patents held (validly) by Apple in the US patent system.
Samsung's lawyers trotted out the same old line about having a monopoly on rectangles with rounded corners, even though they were found NOT to have infringed on it.
Samsung were asked by Apple to license the technology/patents. They refused, and so Apple defended themselves. Samsung would've done the same - and, in fact, did, by claiming that Apple had infringed on some of Samsung's patents.
I won't argue with you about the facts of the case. I merely cast doubt on the statement that it was all about values, not the money.
Sure they have design values - that's undeniable - but when you go into a major court-room battle with billions at stake, it had better be about money. Anything else and you risk pissing away your wealth and pissing off the shareholders.
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