How Steve Jobs Patent-Trolled Bill Gates 307
theodp writes "Apple, which is currently waging IP war on Android vendors, is no stranger to patent trolling. Citing the Steve Jobs bio, Forbes' Eric Jackson recalls how Steve Jobs used patents to get Bill Gates to make a 1997 investment in Apple. Recalled Jobs: 'Microsoft was walking over Apple's patents. I said [to Gates], "If we kept up our lawsuits, a few years from now we could win a billion-dollar patent suit. You know it, and I know it. But Apple's not going to survive that long if we're at war. I know that. So let's figure out how to settle this right away. All I need is a commitment that Microsoft will keep developing for the Mac and an investment by Microsoft in Apple so it has a stake in our success.' Next thing you know, BillG was lording over Jobs at Macworld Boston, as the pair announced the $150 million investment that breathed new life into then-struggling Apple. So, does Gates deserve any credit for helping create the world's most valuable company?"
Patent Troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't you have to be a bottom feeding shell corporation with no actual products to be a patent troll?
Not sure Apple fit this definition at any stage of it's history.
That's like saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you have to be a bottom feeding shell corporation with no actual products to be a patent troll?
Not sure Apple fit this definition at any stage of it's history.
"Don't you have to be poor, with no actual possession, to be a crack addict?"
Patent trolling is an act, not a profession. Though some people/companies do base their business around that single act.
Re:That's like saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
The common accepted definition of "patent troll" is:
Patent troll is a pejorative term used for a person or company who buys and enforces patents against one or more alleged infringers in a manner considered by the target or observers as unduly aggressive or opportunistic, often with no intention to further develop, manufacture or market the patented invention.
(Taken from wikipedia) [wikipedia.org]
Another trait of patent trolls is they want to make sure you stay in business, albeit with low margins, since you going out of business means you cant pay licenses.
Apple's patent wars have never been done with the goal of get licensing fees from anyone. Their goal is almost always to kill products they despite (for one reason or another, but are mostly motivated by personal company grudges.)
I'm not saying Apple is a nice kid playing by the rules, but they are far from being a patent troll.
As for the article itself... what retard wrote that, and how am I not shocked it's posted in Forbes? Yes, Apple (not jobs, the lawsuits had been going for years and Jobs had just returned) was running a legal battle against Microsoft at the time, but as Jobs said, Apple was going to go under way before they were able to win or lose. And to be honest, Microsoft had the money to even pay if they ever won.
Losses were not what was in Gate's mind at the time. The reason Gates actually bailed Apple out was that Apple going out of business would had been horrible for Microsoft's defense in their anti-trust monopoly abuse case since Apple's competition was one of the points that was constantly brought up by the defense during the case.
Actually... (Score:2, Insightful)
That Wikipedia quote, while it does have a leg to stand on, its one leg is not in any remotely good condition and it is missing several toes.
It cites an article where it is said the following, about patent trolls:
"The long-anticipated eBay case gets to the heart of the debate over so-called patent trolls â" companies that obtain patents only to license them, often using the threat of an injunction to extract a high price from infringers." Woellert, L.: eBay Takes on the Patent Trolls. Business Week, March 30, 2006.
One of the arguments that eBay made was that non-practicing inventors, quaintly nicknamed "patent trolls," should not be entitled to an injunction as a matter of course.
Oh, my! Now non-practicing inventors are "patent trolls" too.
And then it goes further along that way:
Who are these evil âoepatent trollsâ anyway? The term was first coined by Intel, whose in-house counsel was quoted to have said, âoeA patent troll is somebody who tries to make a lot of money off a patent that they are not practicing and have no intention of practicing and in most cases never practiced.â(TM)â Sandburg, B.: Inventorâ(TM)s Lawyer Makes a Pile from Patents. The Recorder, July 30, 2001. According to this definition, a non-practicing inventor is a patent troll.
And there is more:
Later, the definition of âoepatent trollâ was modified to describe those who buy patents, which they do not practice, for the sole purpose of assertion. Under this definition, to be a troll one needs to (a) buy a patent, (b) not practice the patented invention, and (c) assert the acquired patent. As I have argued in Making Innovation Pay â" Turning IP into Shareholder Value (B. Berman, ed., John Wiley & Sons Publishers, Inc.) (2006), this definition is patently absurd.
And in the end, the author decides that there is no such thing as a patent troll at all:
To summarize, the so-called "patent trolls" are stuff of myths and legends, not of sound reason.
So, you saying that "they are far from being a patent troll" makes sense - but only because
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Informative)
Go listen to "When Patents Attack" by This American Life. [thisamericanlife.org] They not only talk about the origin of the term "Patent Troll" but also talk to the guy that coined it up and he explains it's an allegory to the bridge trolls in fantasy, that will pop up as soon as you try to cross a bridge and just demand money.
Re: (Score:2)
The whole point of the patent system is to encourage cross licensing, sharing, and development of ideas while ensuring that real inventors can be paid for their creations.
Apple uses the patent system to suppress and eliminate competition.
You don't need to have a profit motive to be a patent troll -- you just need to abuse the patent system to ensure it costs other people money to defend against the bogu
Re:That's like saying... (Score:4, Informative)
The whole point of the patent system is to encourage cross licensing, sharing, and development of ideas while ensuring that real inventors can be paid for their creations.
I'm sorry but you are living in fantasy land. The whole point of the patent system is to encourage people to invent things and have a legal resort to make sure no one steals their invention, that way they can justify the time and money invested to invent since now they can actually profit from the invention.
I do accept the patent system is broken and sucks, and should be abolished or heavily revamped, but patents were always about roadblocks and restrictions.
As for the origin of the name "patent troll" listen to This American LIfe's coverage on the topic [thisamericanlife.org]. They talk to the guy that originally coined the term and the reason: fantasy trolls that live under bridges and bully you to pay money if you want to use the bridge. Unlike some users like to think, patent trolls are not named after the forum variety that is there just to bother and annoy.
Re: (Score:3)
Apple may be abusing the patent system, but not all abuse is trolling. Patent troll has a specific meaning.
Companies who sell products which use patents have incentives to cross-license with other similar companies. If you need my patent and I need your patent, we can come to agreement about reasonable terms. If I don't need your patent because I found a way around it, then you have incentive to drop your demands down to the cost of my work-around. But if I don't need your patent because I don't sell any pr
Re: (Score:3)
. But if I don't need your patent because I don't sell any products at all, then I can demand unreasonable royalties. The royalties don't make me a troll, it's not selling products that makes me a troll. Patent trolling is all about asymmetrical relationships between patent holders; those who need patents because they make things, and those who don't need patents because they don't make things.
If an inventor actually has invented something and licenses it rather than setting up a lot of factories himself, does that make him a patent troll?
Re: (Score:3)
I won't argue the patent war claims, but to be honest: patents themselves are counter to the interest of technological progress. They should not exist, as they stand their sole purpose is to squash competition.
"patent troll" is still not the word, but this is not me trying to defend Apple, just trying to use the term where it belongs (Lodsys [wikipedia.org] was a patent troll, for instance.)
BTW, patents are not meant to be used in a "defensive way" at all. The only "defensive" use of patents is to sue the hell out of anyon
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Patent Troll Nothing... (Score:4, Informative)
Patent troll nothing. Microsoft was caught red handed with code lifted *DIRECTLY* from the Quicktime codecs. This was not trolling with a concept or buying patents to then leverage against someone else, this was outright plagiarism.
Re: (Score:2)
this was outright plagiarism.
Which has nothing to do with patents.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Your evidence, courtesy of some reporting by The Register in 1998.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1998/10/29/microsoft_paid_apple_150m/
"However, although Intel certainly knew that Canyon had developed key parts of the code for Apple, it did not specify that this must be undertaken in a clean room, which is a damning condemnation in view of Intel's experience of such matters following its own litigation with AMD. A month later, Canyon delivered the program to Intel containing code that was an exact copy of the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's not saying anything about Microsoft copying Apple's source. That's merely saying that Canyon developed some product for Apple and for Intel and that the two products shared source code.
The two things are completely different in moral and in legal terms.
Put another way, what action against Microsoft do you think Apple would have been entitled to take, and for what amount or other specific remedy?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Given that Microsoft accepted and shipped the code to their developers (and from a number of reports, did so knowingly), then I think Apple was entirely justified in adding Microsoft to the list of defendants in the case.
As to what amount or specific remedy Apple should've received, I can't say. First, because I'm a physicist and not a lawyer. And secondly, because I'm Canadian and not American. You folks love your crazy-ass lawsuits down there.
Re:Patent Troll Nothing... (Score:5, Informative)
Read about it yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation#Apple_v._Microsoft.2C_Intel.2C_and_San_Francisco_Canyon_Company [wikipedia.org]
Re:Patent Troll Nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)
so the San Francisco Canyon Company actually stole the code. Microsoft & Intel used the software they produced AND *ALLEGEDLY* (a word that every Apple fanboy really needs to learn) knew that the company was stealing the code. You may say, why did MS threaten Apple if it weren't true and the answer is that litigation would have been more expensive, whether or not Apple was correct.
Copyright infringement. Doesn't matter too much whether you know about it or not. By hiring a company that stole the code, and using the stolen code, Microsoft became legally responsible. Not morally, assuming they didn't know anything about the code theft (and they would have had to be bloody stupid to buy the code if they had known it was stolen).The same principle that allows the BSA to make a company pay big time if an employee, with or without knowledge of his superiors, uses pirated software.
Enough Already (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh my f'ing gawd! If you're going to use the term "patent troll", make damn sure you know what it means. When a company infringes a patent and is sued for doing so, the suing party is _NOT_ a patent troll. When the CEO of a suing company opens a dialogue and negotiates a settlement that is mutually beneficial to both companies, that is _NOT_ a patent troll.
A patent troll is a company that makes nothing of note (typically nothing at all) yet sues other companies for patent infringement. In fact, it can be best summed up that a patent troll's business model is generating revenues from suing other companies for patent infringement. Now, before anyone tries to be witty and claim that describes Apple, pull your head out of your ass and be honest - Apple makes BILLIONS of dollars _MAKING AND SELLING ACTUAL PRODUCTS!_ They invest a massive amount of money into R&D and thus have numerous patents covering their inventions. Thus, when a company infringes one of those patents, it is entirely within their right and understandable that they would sue for infringement but APPLE IS NOT A PATENT TROLL.
Seriously. You may not like their actions; you may not like Steve Jobs; you may think everything related to Apple is crap but be honest and understand what a patent troll is and recognize Apple is NOT a patent troll.
The major issue I have with people watering down the meaning of the term is that it weakens the debate against actual patent trolls who are leaches of the worst order. When you use "patent troll" to describe Apple, just because you don't like them, you weaken the ability to rightly vilify the real patent trolls.
Apple is NOT a patent troll. You don't have to like them - hate them all you want - but be honest and recognize they are NOT a patent troll.
Re:Enough Already (Score:4, Funny)
I don't understand. are you saying Apple is NOT a patent troll? If you are it in no way came across in your post.
Re: (Score:3)
Not all trolls are non-practicing entities. A company which does make stuff, but makes a practice of filing broad patents on every aspect of what they make, however trivial, and then digs them up and uses them to extort payment from o
Re: (Score:2)
A company which does make stuff, but makes a practice of filing broad patents on every aspect of what they make, however trivial, and then digs them up and uses them to extort payment from others is also engaging in patent trolling. Thus Unisys with the LZW patent, Microsoft with the various FAT long-file-name patents, etc.
But when do you get to use a loaded word like "extort" and when is it merely ordinary, run-of-the-mill patent licensing, which is very clearly part of the purpose of having patent law in the first place? IBM has one of the largest patent portfolios [ibm.com] in the world. Is it a "patent troll"? I hardly think so. Wall Street and economists don't appear to think so, either; IBM is considered a blue chip stock.
Re: (Score:3)
Guess that depends on how you feel about the patent system. If you think the whole thing is bad, you probably use words "extort" even for run-of-the-mill patent licensing. Personally I use it whenever a company appears to be offensively using an obviously bogus and overbroad patent -- Honeywell suing "The
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Not just patents... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, does Gates deserve any credit for helping create the world's most valuable company?
The reality is that he probably had little choice in the matter. Not investing in Apple would risk having Microsoft as pretty much the only operating system company in existence (OS/2, Solaris and others had virtually no market share, and Linux was not really a competitor on the desktop back then). With the IE antitrust suits just starting around that time, killing off Windows' biggest competitor was a bad idea. So, you could argue that keeping Apple alive was necessary for MS, even if it might cause future problems, and those could be minimised via network effects (people needing Windows to run their applications).
mod parent up. it's the DOJ, stupid (Score:2)
Microsoft did not get to be a monopoly by kowtowing to threats of patent lawsuits from failing competitors.
the DOJ lawsuits against MS had more to do with MS supporting Apple than, well, anything. The DOJ was about to get all into MS's business, with bizarre stuff like forcing them to ship Windows without the IE browser, and other harebrained schemes.
this experience it also probably kept MS out of the phone market and the retail store market, vertical integration, etc. - apparently someone didn't give Redmo
Patent-troll? & Cash! (Score:2)
First, a patent toll isn't a company protecting their intellectual property. A patent troll is a 'firm' that makes nothing, but simply collects patents and hires a lot of lawyers in an attempt to squeeze some cash out of the victims of such tolling.
Second, when you have BILLIONS of cash in the bank, a $150 million 'investment' is better called, a token gesture.
Re:Patent-troll? & Cash! (Score:4, Interesting)
$150 million investment that breathed new life into then-struggling Apple
when you have BILLIONS of cash in the bank, a $150 million 'investment' is better called, a token gesture.
This tiny detail of history is always presented wrong... but you have a wiff of the truth. Bill Gates' and Microsoft's $150 million investment was exactly that, a token gesture, and it is not what 'saved' Apple from bankruptcy. It was Jobs and his radical reshaping of the company, the elimination of failing product lines, and the introduction of the iPod/iTunes paradigm that probably saved Apple. Had that $150 million never changed hands, the result would not have been much different. Jobs wanted Microsoft's Office products for the Mac... that's ALL that was. Did MS Office save Apple? Fuck no... that's absurd.
What I don't understand ... (Score:2)
Why would Bill Gates invest in Apple if Jobs admitted that Apple wouldn't survive long enough to win a patent lawsuit against MS anyway? Something's fishy. Gates could just wait 'em out and let Apple go away and gobble up the patents. Must be something more to the story.
But I have no trouble believing that MS was infringing... I don't think they (or, probably, anyone else back then) paid much attention to "patents". They were paying more attention to copyright but even then, not very much.
Re: (Score:2)
Or Apple could have sold those patents for short-term cash to a third party that DID have the necessary longevity to win a billion-dollar settlement from Microsoft.
Meh. This whole article is just ad keyword spam. Any second now Slashdot's gonna start posting news from the fruit and produce industry just to ensure more of its articles contain the word "Apple".
Re: (Score:2)
Why would Bill Gates invest in Apple if Jobs admitted that Apple wouldn't survive long enough to win a patent lawsuit against MS anyway?
You know the answer to that. Apple wouldn't survive as such, but the lawsuit would. See: SCO Group. Jobs was saying he had a strong enough case to win a massive settlement somewhere down the line, and Gates knew it. To get that settlement would take years, though, and investing Apple's resources in lawsuits while it struggled in the products market would probably mean the death of Apple's products business. The effect would be to take Apple the tech company and replace it with Apple-as-SCO-Group. Jobs was b
The role of Microsoft to Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has played many roles over its long history with Apple. It has been benefactor, beneficiary, competitor, and on occasion extortionist.
As a benefactor, Microsoft has invested in Apple, more than once IIRC. They have also produced many solid productivity applications, and once upon a time a number of programming tools (MS Basic, QuickBasic, Fortran) for the Mac. Apple desperately needed applications for the Mac, especially during the early years when people were wrestling with the enormous increase in complexity that programming the Macintosh interface represented at the time.
As a beneficiary, Microsoft has reaped a nontrivial amount of money from sales of Microsoft products on the Macintosh platform. It also benefited from early exposure to the GUI ideas in the Macintosh and Lisa that popularized and built upon earlier work at Xerox. It could see the many interesting things Apple was doing with object oriented programming, multimedia, and other innovations.
As a competitor, Microsoft modeled Windows after Macintosh and used it to largely drive Apple from the market for many years. Microsoft used its position as the prime application vendor to shape how Macintosh was used, making it more difficult to use Macintosh in business by withholding key applications or dropping others. (Microsoft dropped Microsoft Project and Foxbase/Foxpro for Macintosh, and never produced Access.) Apple has repeatedly aided Microsoft through brilliance in conception, idiocy in execution, and almost non-existent follow through with future products - both hardware and software. (They are doing much better over the last 10 years.)
Business being business, extortionist may be too harsh a word, but Microsoft is rumored to have forced Apple to sell its marvelous Macintosh Basic to Microsoft for $1.00 [folklore.org] if it wanted to get another license for the Microsoft Basic in the ROMs of the Apple IIs - Apple's bread and butter money maker for years after the Macintosh was released. Funny how much Microsoft Basic -> Quickbasic improved around that time. I seem to recall that Microsoft stopped development on Macintosh applications when Apple sued them over the look and feel of Windows as being too close to Macintosh. I don't believe those were the only times that Microsoft played hardball with Apple either, although it probably went both ways at times.
Re: (Score:2)
Two-some in the Reality DIstorion Field (Score:5, Funny)
Professor Xavier (a.k.a. Jobs) once started a school for the gifted, called Apple Computer. There, he and his close associate, Beast (a.k.a. Woz), created a wondrous thing, the personal computer. Upon hearing about this thing, another mutant, Magneto (a.k.a. Gates), came to visit with his close associate, Sabretooth (a.k.a Ballmer), to find out more about Apple. Magneto wanted to plunder Apple but knew that Dr. Xavier had a mysterious 'reality distortion field' that could probe his mind. So Magneto took a special shell (called DOS) that kept Dr. Xavier from reading his mind (there was no point to reading Sabretooth's). Dr. Xavier thought that Magneto was fairly benign and agreed to supply Magneto with his new invention, the Mac. Magneto took the Mac back to his lair in Redmond, and invented 'Windows' (BTW, Sabretooth wanted to call it 'Doors').
Since that day, Dr. Xavier and Magneto would meet at trade shows and Davos, where Magneto would boast of how his mutant Windows had conquered the other OSes -- MVS, VMS, Unix, OS/2, and even the Mac OS. Then, one day Magneto left his helmet in his luggage on the way to Davos, and it was lost by United Airlines (how odd?^). Upon meeting Magneto at Davos, Dr. Xavier realized all the things that Magneto had been hiding from him. So, he cranked-up his reality distortion field to super-strength, entered Magneto's mind, and left thoughts of tax shelters, charities, and vaccines in his head, along with the 'brilliant idea' of turning Magneto's company, Microsoft, over to Sabretooth. And, to top it off, Microsoft would bite a chunk of Apple for $150 million plus promise to develop Microsoft Office for the Mac OS FOREVER.
With that, Magneto 'retired' to save the world from disease and left Microsoft in the hands of Sabretooth, who made Microsoft more profitable than ever AND more irrelevant than ever. The rest is history.
THE END
Apologies to Stan Lee
Dirty deeds... (Score:2)
I could not tell my impression of this story more clear and in just one sentence...
I really wish... (Score:2)
I really wish Bill Gates let Apple die...
$4,000,000,000 Reasons Why Not (Score:3)
How is it possible to write this garbage without mentioning that Apple had $4,000,000,000 in cash at the time?
Bill Gates's token $150 million investment pales in comparison! It was symbolic!
Also how is it "trolling" when Microsoft actually did violate Apple's patents?!
Antitrust (Score:3)
I don't think Bill was threatened by the patents since, as Steve himself said, Apple wouldn't have had the endurance to fight this war. But during this time (1997) was already eyed for abusing its almost-monopoly, and losing the only "serious" competitor (which, compared to MS at that time, was still tiny) wouldn't have helped Microsoft on that front. So I guess it was more valuable for MS to avoid additional antitrust trouble. Also, despite their competition, Bill respected Steve (but the other way round I'm not so sure; Steve said he respected Bill, but while reading the bio I'm sure he lied).
For Apple, it really was an act of desperation that in hindsight payed off. But at the Macworld Expo, there was this famous presentation where Apple announced the deal, that MS would do Office for Mac and made a kind of teleconference with Bill. Bill appeared super-big on the screen, with a grin. The audience booed, which Bill didn't hear. Steve later described this as his biggest failure on stage: it made Steve look little and weak, at the mercy of the Evil Overlord Bill.
-1 Flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod article down.
Oh, wait. Why can't we do modding for articles again? Oh yes, the /. frontpage would be very empty on some days.
There's so much flamebait in this, I don't even know where to start. Pathetic, really.
In other words... (Score:3, Funny)
...Jobs went to Microsoft on his knees and begging for money to stop the final death of his company.
Good to see that at least one point in his career, Jobs understood the word "humility".
Disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure he does. Not only for investing, but for providing solid competition with a different angle to it -- a very successful angle -- that required Apple to innovate one way or another to succeed.
And even today, I still run Windows... under OS X, in a VM, sandboxed safely away from the Internet. :o)
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates deserved credit for many reasons, not just those related to IT. The man, once the world's richest, has basically given away his fortune to humanitarian aid and to help develop the world. I can't think of any other guy who is like Bill Gates. Say what you want about Microsoft, but that man has done some good.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Informative)
Andrew Carnegie [wikipedia.org]?
John D. Rockefeller [wikipedia.org]?
Sort of like Supervillains (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yea, it's sort of a repeating story. Businessman creates a conglomerate empire, too often through dubiously ethical means. Later on, either through guilt or through boredom, the power that's acquired is used more towards philanthropy or just rots in a vault somewhere because the purpose was never the power itself or to wield it but the challenge to acquire that power in the first place and how to use it. Of course, that's just a caricature of the situation, and it's silly to label such people as one-dimensional supervillains.
But I think the point stands that as much as we can be happy that, say, philanthropists do go out of their way to spend their money for the benefit of others, we often turn a blind eye to the fact that government trivially spends more and does greater pragmatic good (health care, paid or manditory, and food programs come to mind), often again through dubiously ethical means*. And not being one-dimensional, I don't think it reasonable to label a person "good" or "evil" in a one-dimensional sense. Certainly, it's hard to think of any one person as a stellar example of perfection in some area. But, then, that's fine. I certainly don't expect as such. That's just hyper projecting and distorting actions, as if there needs to be some level of Godhood attributed to people to have respect or disrespect for their real actions. I think it's enough to just appreciate reality as it is.
*As much as I'm all about freedom and choice, I think it a bit dubious to pretend that business always gives you choice and government does not. A business that dumps toxic waste into a shared river certainly isn't giving you a choice. Neither is a business who, having undercut the competition, has decided to grant you such a pitiful wage that it's neigh impossible for many people to save enough to move away. Thankfully, government has been forced to step in and take away some of these evils. And that's the point, in fact, that the vast majority of people deciding to force actions, even if it goes against the freedom of a few, might be the right and ethical thing to do. It's not a matter of "might makes right", as certainly democracies are just as capable of and have harmed minorities in the past. The point, then, is the matter at hand heavily determines how ethical the situation is, not simply waving a hand about the mechanism and entirely ignoring the consequences. So, while I don't embrace at all the idea of government nosing itself into every bit of what would be great freedom, I think it crazy to call for anarchy just because government makes things worse at times; no system is perfect, which is why you have to actually weigh what's actually going on and not just hand wave in a one-dimensional sort of way.
PS - Thank you very much for the links. Your two examples are very much good examples of the point, as of how different Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller were.
Re:Disagree (Score:4, Informative)
Ahem! [washingtonpost.com]
There's a particularly poignant point about half way down the article where it's said that Ebenezer Jobs shut down Apple's philanthropic programs when he returned to the company in 1997.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In 1997, Apple was going out of business. In such a situation of course they cut any non-business related optional outlay.
Your link makes the point that Jobs spent all his time on Apple. That was his cause. To make the field of computing better for ordinary people. And he achieved that, big time.
Now, with some justification you can criticise that that is only making the world better for those people in the developed world that can afford it. But it's up to people to choose their own objectives in life. Few
Re:Disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahem! [wikipedia.org]
According to the above, the foundation was founded in 1994, long before he stepped down as CEO.
Please don't get me wrong, I'm actually a FOSS/Linux guy and not a Microsoft one, but I prefer facts rather than speculation or FUD.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
The man, once the world's richest, has basically given away his fortune to humanitarian aid and to help develop the world.
Humanitarian? Do you realize the Gates Foundation support ALEC - along with many other scams.
The "American Legislative Exchange Council" has a reputation that you would not believe. It's like they are some James Bond Villian, something like SPECTRE maybe.
> National Public Radio, NPR, has aired several programs about ALEC and its influence in the drafting of legislation
> For ALEC Exposed, the Center for Media and Democracy made a new website
> Simultaneously, The Nation devoted a special edition of its magazine to breaking the story on ALEC Exposed
> On July 14, 2011, the Los Angeles Times announced that government watchdog Common Cause would issue a challenge to ALEC's nonprofit status, on the grounds that ALEC "spends most of its resources lobbying, in violation of the rules governing nonprofit organizations."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council
It just goes on and on.
The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor
> . . . prison labor for the private sector was legally barred for years, to avoid unfair competition with private companies. But this has changed thanks to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), its Prison Industries Act,
> Somewhat more familiar is ALEC’s instrumental role in the explosion of the US prison population in the past few decades. ALEC helped pioneer some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today, like mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws.
http://www.thenation.com/article/162478/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor
12 Things You Need to Know About the Uprising in Wisconsin
Monday, 21 February 2011 19:03
> What's happening in Wisconsin is not complicated. At the beginning of this year, the state was on course to end 2011 with a budget surplus of $120 million. As Ezra Klein explained, newly elected GOP Governor Scott Walker then " signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it turned a surplus into a deficit." (Update: please see this note for more detail on the cause of the budget gap.)
> Walker then used the deficit he'd created as the justification for assaulting his state's public employees. He used a law cooked up by a right-wing advocacy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC likes to fly beneath the radar, but I described the organization in a 2005 article as "the connective tissue that links state legislators with right-wing think tanks, leading anti-tax activists and corporate money." Similar laws are on the table in Ohio and Indiana.
http://techsunite.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=3&layout=blog&Itemid=58&limitsta...
And now this comes out in techrights:
Bill Gates Funds ALEC
02.27.12
> Summary: A citizens-hostile front group turns out to be funded by the Gates Foundation
> IN OUR daily links we occasionally include links about ALEC, a controversial AstroTurfing/lobbying group for corporate power. It turns out that Bill Gates is funding them. “Knowingly or not, the Gates Foundation has just stepped on a political landmine,” says this one report. What about the Koch ties that we wrote about some days ago?
http://techrights.org/2012/02/27/alec-and-gates-foundation/
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Informative)
Like the parent poster said, do some basic research. This took me 30 seconds to find:
http://www.badseed.info/GMO-genetically-modified-crop-news/35309_bill-gates-ties-up-with-monsanto.html
Proof (Score:3)
Google the following: gates foundation site:techrights.org
Read all the article that appear.
You are welcome.
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That's like referring someone to Fox News for information on Obama. Seriously.
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The world still has TNT and tactical weapons yet the Nobel Prizes are what are popularly associated with Alfred Nobel.
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required Apple to innovate one way or another to succeed.
Except that Apple did not "innovate," but rather used the innovations of others, and dressed those innovations up to be more marketable. In 1997 Apple was still shipping a cooperative multitasking OS, and used the "innovative" approach of using the Mach microkernel, using the same sort of "hybrid" design as BeOS and Windows NT (oh the irony...). Apple has not really been an innovative company since the 1970s, at least in the sense of innovative companies advancing the state of technology, but they are p
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Some would call those "dressed those innovations up to be more marketable" to be innovations themselves.
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They're more design and user experience innovations than science and engineering ones.
But that's the case with any business. Even if you do a lot of research (think Microsoft), you can't research everything, you read up on the literature on what other people are doing, copy the ideas you want and package it up (copying may include paying for it in some form).
Of course the design and user experience innovations don't mean anything without the science and engineering ones. Bill Gates was telling us for year
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Bill Gates was telling us for years we'd have tablets and slates that we could carry around with us, and the concept was proliferated and demonstrated before him on Star Trek which got it from other sources etc. etc. etc.
Or by Apple, with the (highly innovative, at the time) Newton.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in no way bitter. A sci fi writer thought of a technology that would be neat, having no idea how to implement it, or if it was ever even going to be possible. A technology guy (Bill Gates) thought of an implementation of it as a similar technology but could never quite get it. Apple realized that the key to the user experience was touch sensitivity that had been developed long before by someone else. It was a tremendous innovation in design to realize that was the the key missing element. It was so crucial to the whole thing they could come up with probably the stupidest product name in decades, and it *still* sold like hotcakes. That shows just how valuable design innovation is.
But they didn't develop touch screens. In the context of what is an innovation, developing a touch screen was a science and engineering innovation, apple didn't do that. They did innovate the design and integration.
Without the technology for touch screens it would have never come together at all. And we'd be stuck with microsofts vision of tablets and slates (which, admittedly served me very well for specific purposes, but not for what an iPad does).
If you want to go one step further, the Android guys (and microsoft) are trying to figure out what the most important things Apple missed are. Androids answer to this is "mostly open marketplace", Microsoft is more on the 'stop thinking of it as a collection of dumb icons' approach.
I appreciate that you may have had trouble reading the first line of my post, but I was quite clearly I was drawing a distinction between types of innovation, and stating one cannot exist without another. That happens a lot. No hard feelings.
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Apple has not really been an innovative company since the 1970s, at least in the sense of innovative companies advancing the state of technology
Since the 1970s? In other words, there was nothing innovative about the Macintosh or any product Apple has shipped since? That's just absurd.
Apple has been and continues to be a highly innovative company. The fact that you had to cherry-pick some random example like the Mach kernel (which Apple really only got on board with when it acquired NeXT) demonstrates how full of it you are.
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Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple does what it does very, very well, but innovation is not the correct word for it.
Innovation is doing something for the first time. Granted, Apple does have patents, as do most successful technology companies. But those patents, those actual innovations, are not what the public associates with Apple.
Apple is known for being the first to do something well. Not the first to do it, not to invent it, but the first to do it well. That's not innovation, that's called execution. Execution may well be more important than innovation. It's worth celebrating, it brings in lots of money, it's the key to success.
Xerox PARC innovated like crazy, but executed poorly. It took other companies, such as Apple, to take Xerox's innovations and turn them into successful products. Ethernet was an innovation that was limited to the niche of Xerox-only networks until Xerox teamed with Intel and DEC. Intel executed well, making chips that made Ethernet affordable. DEC executed well, incorporating Ethernet into nearly all of their products. 3Com and Novell then took it into the PC market. That's the difference between innovation and execution. Xerox innovated. Intel, DEC, 3Com, and Novell executed Xerox's innovation well.
Apple is very good at recognizing when the time is right to meld multiple innovations into a product. They don't need to be their own innovations. In other words, Apple excels at product development rather than research. The issue is muddled because most companies and the press usually lump the two together as R&D, but innovation comes out of research rather than development.
Apple does many things well, you've pointed out some of the things that Apple does well, but you've used the wrong word to describe it. You aren't the first and won't be the last to misuse the word; advertising agencies and marketing departments misuse the word daily.
But Apple sues over those "inventions" like mad (Score:4, Insightful)
That is what bothers me. If a bunch of ignorant Apple zealots want to insist that Apple invented rounded corners, slide to unlock, and all things shinny; that's fine with me.
But, Apple pulling a Tonya Harding like stunt, to get Samsung devices pulled off market, because Apple does not want to compete with Android ICS; is very low scam, even for Apple.
Re:But Apple sues over those "inventions" like mad (Score:5, Interesting)
The match between Apple and Nokia is much better than the match between Samsung and Apple. Who is ripping off who? Basically this kind of "copying" is nothing more than a type of fashion and Apple is outrageous to try to get competitor's products banned for things that they do themselves many times over.
I know more about computers than you (Score:4, Insightful)
and I like my over-priced shiny Apple products. If it doesn't meet your needs then buy something else; I don't see why you have to insult hundreds of millions of people just because their needs are different from yours.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
You're trying to define innovate to mean the same thing as invent. That's not what it means. It means "Make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.". It's hard to argue that Apple doesn't do this. They find markets where there's room for improvement in the products and then release a product which is better is some way.
I agree, but then there's the stuff that Apple plain invented. FireWire? ADB? AppleTalk? TrueType? Even the PowerPC wouldn't exist without Apple's involvement. This idea that Apple doesn't create anything is frankly bizarre, and I think it must just be sour grapes, because it has very little basis in reality.
But Apple does not sue over that stuff (Score:3)
Apple sues over garbage can icons, and rounded corners, and slide-to-unlock, and other such junk IP.
Apple's latest flood of lawsuits are not about protecting Apple's ideas. The lawsuits are about Apple breaking their competitor's kneecaps, because that's the way Apple likes to "compete."
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Oh please, bitch. The Mach microkernel was pioneered by Avie Tevanian and his colleagues at CMU. He left CMU to join a new company called NeXT which had as its CEO Steve Jobs after he left Apple. NeXTStep was developed but did not reach critical mass. When Jobs returned to Apple he brought Tevanian and Jon Rubenstein (previously head of hardware engineering at NeXT) to head Software and Hardware respectively at the 'new' Apple. The software for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, and iPod touch is all developed
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple practically invented patent trolling (Score:5, Informative)
I wish someone would steal from me like that.
Re:Apple practically invented patent trolling (Score:5, Informative)
Current value of those shares if held to the present day would be 8,000,000 x $500 = $4 Billion and still climbing (of course that would have required nerves of steel). Even Doctor Evil would be impressed. (N.B. Apple stock has split three times).
By the way anyone who accuses Apple (or any other company that actually creates and sells products based on their patents) a patent troll indicates gross ignorance on the part of the accuser. The only definition I've heard of that term is a company that has no products of its own so that cross licensing is never an option for negotiation. Patent trolls are "purely abstract" companies that game the patent system to change it from an attempt to encourage innovation to one that kills innovation (cf. Intellectual Ventures and its vile ilk).
Re:Apple practically invented patent trolling (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure that the PARC demo was seminal. They took from a lot of people but they didn't take as much from everybody else altogether as much they did from PARC. Why PARC didn't patent and exploit it is a different question. Another question is why Digital didn't market the demo PC they built - vehemently opposed by David Cutler.
Dave Cutler, who was involved with this technology, jumped to Microsoft at that time (October 1988) and is still there now. He was working on the recently embarrassingly failed Azure, but is now on the XBox team [wikipedia.org].
He's 70 now so his contributions might not be as vigorous as they once were - but they have the unequaled benefit of his unique experience of having prevented DEC from marketing the PC they invented.
Apple did not invent patent trolling (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, some of the technology was patented, but had expired - the mouse, for instance. Also, due to antitrust litigation, Xerox had limits on what they could patent, so they focused more on products than technologies when applying for patents (for instance, the LaserWriter and Ethernet). Incidentally, they did sue Apple, but the statute of limitations had passed so it was thrown out. Apple also lost its early UI patent lawsuit against Microsoft precisely because they had largely borrowed a bunch of ideas from the Star.
But this meeting was later - by the time Bill and Steve met, Apple was sitting on a pile of new patents Microsoft was infringing on. The situation is not unlike the current Apple vs Android - Apple owns patents like swipe to unlock and Android (and Microsoft for that matter) is infringing. Saying Apple is a patent troll is unfair; defending patents you created is much different than buying a bunch of patents just to sue potential infringees as your sole or a major mean of income. For instance, look at how Unisys handled LZW - they bought Compuserv and thus the patent, then started suing anyone that made programs that created GIF (which uses LZW), and even though they probably wouldn't have won a lawsuit due to statute of limitations, they still made bundles of cash just by threatening to sue.
Re:Apple practically invented patent trolling (Score:5, Informative)
You are very misinformed in using the word "stole". Apple clearly paid Xerox for everything it got from the tours there (except maybe for the engineers that it hired away):
http://obamapacman.com/2010/03/myth-copyright-theft-apple-stole-gui-from-xerox-parc-alto/
A choice quote (for those too lazy to click over):
Apple obtained permission ahead of the Xerox PARC visit. In addition, Apple provided compensation in exchange for the various Xerox PARC ideas such as the GUI.
Re:Apple practically invented patent trolling (Score:5, Informative)
An interesting side story to this is that Apple engineers went crazy implementing overlapping windows because they were shown such a feature at Xerox. Xerox engineers were shocked since they never actually implemented the feature and thought it to be impossible to do.
At the end of the day the only thing Apple got out of Xerox were ideas, nothing else. Implementation details were almost all home grown and some of those details were shared with Microsoft. Those were the details Apple sued Microsoft over.
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They sued over 'look and feel'. They literally were suing over a trashcan. The lawsuit was dismissed. Because they were suing over graphics and the idea of throwing something out.
When it came down to it MS could have ignored apple all together. They didnt. They saw a decent market there and went after it (like most ruthless businesses do). The ideas of overlapping windows are almost silly not to think of once you introduce windowing...
Re:Apple practically invented patent trolling (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't that overlapping windows were overlooked they were hard. You had to have a way to keep track of which window was on top and render the windows in order so that the right parts are covered by the windows on top. It was much easier if you knew every window was in its own area, you could do things in any order and if something updated in a window that wasn't the topmost you could still rerender its window since you knew it wouldn't affect the active window. Think 10 windows open slightly overlapping each other. The background colour of the bottom one changes. You need a way to figure out that it AND everything on top needs to be rerendered (so that the right places are covered), or alternatively have a way to clip the image and render subregions of a window. Regardless it was difficult with the hardware/software capabilities at the time.
Re:Apple practically invented patent trolling (Score:5, Interesting)
That's certainly an informative piece—so thank you—although I think I can resolutely say that while Apple didn't steal it from Xerox, they did definitely steal it from PARC:
Then, in exchange for the opportunity to invest in a hot new pre-IPO start-up called "Apple," the Xerox PARC commandos were forced — under protest — to give Apple’s engineers a tour and a demonstration of their work.
That being said, I don't completely trust the article by Mr. Landley being quoted, because it perpetuates the misunderstanding that Windows was purely derived from Xerox and the Macintosh; this is annoyingly in ignorance of VisiCorp Visi On [toastytech.com], and that Windows was already under development when the consumer GUI market consisted of the Lisa and Visi On.
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At the end of the day, BillG is alive and SteveJ is not.
Re:First post (Score:5, Interesting)
At the end of the day, BillG is alive and SteveJ is not.
A few years, and we'll say: At the end of the day, MacOS X is alive and Windows is dead :-)
Seriously, Apple just pulled off the mother of all trolls: They made Microsoft believe that Mountain Lion would be a merge between MacOS X and iOS, and promptly Microsoft responded with Windows 8, which _is_ a merge between a desktop and a phone OS.
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Do you have Netcraft confirming that Windows is dead?
Because every OS out now has been "dead" according to the internet since it was made.
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I seem to recall that Apple at the time still had a couple of billion in the bank as cash? Oh, I guess it was only $1.2 billion.
"Others have suggested Apple was just out of money and desperately needed Microsoft's help, ignoring the fact that Apple had just reported holding $1.2 billion in cash. Another $0.15 billion wasn't going to make any significant difference in the survival of the company."
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592FE887-5CA1-4F30-BD62-407362B533B9.html [roughlydrafted.com]
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That makes nothing you need.
In your prejudice, did you mean computers, laptops, smartphones, media players, tablets, and online music sale/rental stores? Or were you referring to Apple's products specifically? My other snarky comment is that assuming your statement is directed at Apple and it's true, they do a bang-up job of making things people want.
Re:The Worlds Most Valuable Company (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with people valuing better design?
Re:The Worlds Most Valuable Company (Score:4, Informative)
I use Apple devices because they DO work better, for me. Windows has never been a good fit, always got in the way more than it ever enabled. Linux and other options are not and have not been viable for me. Sure I could use any PC to do work but effectively? No. Apples devices get out of my way. They do what I want them to, enable me, empower me.
Yes even the hardware. I can't stand non-Apple trackpads. So clumsy. Non-Apple PCs also generally have too much cruft. Too many useless function keys and buttons, all of which suck up resources, get in the way and are poorly thought out.
Same is true of Windows. Too much unnecessary crap getting in the way. Every window has a pointless toolbar, every controll panel has 50 tabbed views crammed in. Search never worked, still doesn't.
I can keep going but it really comes down to the fact that Apple's technology implementations were and are the best. That makes me more productive which means I am more successful.
So yeah I think they deserve their present success.
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Maybe he's got another account that has mod points. I disagree with such practices, but some folks roll that way.
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Do you think the Kindle Fire would exist in a form usable by medical personnel if it weren't for the iPad?
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No, I didn't know that. Who was selling a monolithic tablet with WiFi, an XGA display with capacitive multitouch, and 8+ hour battery life, before Apple? You can point to vaporware like the CrunchPad, but nobody had ever successfully tackled the problems associated with tablet computing at the platform level.
Doctors have used portable touchscreen devices for a long time, but they've historically been saddled with things like Fujitsu Lifebook PCs running god-awful Pen Windows hackery.
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I can point to a bunch of examples, but it doesn't matter. You'll refuse any example that differs even in a trivial way from the iPad.
Apple didn't invent the tablet. They didn't even invent iPad-style tablets. Get over it.
Tablets before the iPad were completely different beasts... you have tablets before the iPad [thetechbrief.com], you have tablets after the iPad [zdnet.co.uk]. You can easily see the difference, and when operating them you'd also find a huge conceptual difference.
When you are able to say "before" and "after" about a product - like the iPhone and the iPad - you can't avoid saying that the company behind those products has been innovative. How much of this should be protected is a separate matter.
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Then, I started thinking about the things I buy that I *do* need, and how I typically buy higher quality versions
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Modded down by fanbois, modded up by?
...fandroids. Kinda the flip side of the coin.
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R.I.P. ClarisWorks, you were ever a thorn in Office's side.
It still is. Now it is called "iWork" and iWork on the iPad is one of MS's more credible threats as it puts a competitor on a popular device and market subset MS hasn't been able to effectively target.
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depends how you count it. And there are a lot of ways to count it.
Apple is highest total market cap regularly, (trading places the Exxon depending on share prices). It is no where near the largest assets or total employees. Though those don't count sub contracted employees (think foxconn) or intellectual assets.
I think it's most profitable, but it doesn't actually pay a dividend (yet), so other companies that do pay dividends are worth more in that respect. It's way down there on revenue, but profit pe
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"Back then Microsoft was using their shear size to dominate other companies"
Now the shoe is on the other foot. I remember reading back in those years, that Apple would make a worse Microsoft than Microsoft.
Whoever said that was a bloody psychic.
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Bill Gates built the Microsoft empire by crushing competition
Correct.
and flooding the market
Pray tell, how can one "flood" a market which is based on intangible goods whose duplication cost is near zero?
with low-quality products
In some instances yes. In other instances no. Windows 7 is not a "low quality product."
and not letting hardware companies offer any alternatives
Really? Bill Gates held a gun to their heads and forced them, did he?
Most people use Windows and Office because "everybody else uses that