Why Apple Denied the Google Latitude App 308
awyeah writes "A recently revealed Apple patent looks remarkably similar to the functionality of Google Latitude, which Apple relegated to WebApp status earlier this year. Obviously if Apple is working on their own version of Google Latitude (or owns the IP rights to this functionality), they'd be hesitant to put an app with the same functionality on their devices from another company."
I Smell Patent War (Score:4, Insightful)
This begs the question, if Google already had an app out, who did it first?
Obviously the patent process takes years.
Re:I Smell Patent War (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way, this is a pretty clear example of why no company should be allowed to have control over what software consumers can put on devices that they own. It was wrong when the phone companies tried to be sole arbiter, and it is just as wrong for Apple to play that role. It is guaranteed to be abused sooner or later in a way that prevents competition in the marketplace and harms consumers. It was only a matter of time.
I so badly want to see the FTC slap Apple with fines every day until they open the iPhone up to apps sold outside the app store without Apple vetting. That is the only action that sets a strong enough precedent that consumers are in charge of devices that they paid for and have a right to tinker.
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Re:I Smell Patent War (Score:4, Insightful)
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They brought it to market, and their executives (Jobs) decide the way things can go. If you want something else, get a Blackberry/Drobo/whatever. There will be lots of choice for those who feel offended easily.
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Not for the iPhone (Score:2)
But you know that.
Re:Not for the iPhone (Score:4, Insightful)
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Quick, you go ahead and make something you call an "iPhone." The legal system will take you apart in seconds, leaving your bones for the sharks. That's not "monopoly," that's IP.
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The only monopoly that Apple has is the monopoly they have on ownership rights of their own production, and they have every right to that. They've decided to go this way. Are they using "market power" to control the market? I don't see how they do. They aren't even the top-selling smartphone, and they don't dominate the cell phone market in any way. Is their "market power" crowding out competitors by coercion? No, the only monopoly they have is with all those who buy iPhones VOLUNTARILY. Are they forcing ce
No one has said anything about the phone market (Score:2)
There's no denying that Apple has a monopoly on applications for the iPhone, though, whether legally or not.
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By the way, how many suits has Apple launched against jailbreakers?
They may not have filed any lawsuits yet, but they have [eff.org] petitioned the DMCA rulemaking committee to declare it illegal [crunchgear.com].
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Buy what you want. That's the American way.
I don't quite understand the outrage at an iPhone store that has 100,000 apps and whose costs range from free to pretty cheap, and which has lacked a few dozen well-publicized apps, most of which are rejected due to mistakes and errors.
If you don't like it, don't buy it. That's simple.
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Speaking out for what's right is not "doing a corporation's bidding".
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You mean raises the question. Begging the question is a form of logical fallacy which basically means that you are assuming something is true/false in order to prove that it's true/false.
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Yes, my mistake. It's so often misused sometimes it's hard not to.
Re:I Smell Patent War (Score:5, Funny)
This just begs the question "Who the hell cares?"
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Begs the question makes the unitiated English speaker (or those who didn't pay much attention in English 101) think something is so off in some way that one feel a powerful urge to comment. An emotionally stronger version of raising the question so to speak. To say that begs the question can only be a logical fallacy is about as well... logical as claiming a straw man is only a fallacy, and can't be a humanoid shaped object made of straw.
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All three definitions are essentially the same thing. The "obvious question" you invite in the first definition is the assumption that something is true when you're trying to prove that it is. It's a way of evading the issue of the question you're begging by raising a question you have not dealt with.
It's the most basic form of logical fallacy in political discourse today. If they couldn't beg questions, the GOP would collapse.
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Words and phrases change meaning over time.
Yup. It's also interesting how on a site like Slashdot, where people regularly mock the wider world for many things that all more or less boil down to resistance to change, there is apparently a sizable group of people who continually fail to accept this - the most obvious example being the "hacker" vs. "cracker" debates that repeatedly played out here over the past few years.
Words change meaning. Languages grow, morph, and sometimes die. Deal with it, guys.
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"Resistance to change" is no vice when the change isn't an improvement.
"Begging the question" has a perfectly good meaning that doesn't particularly need to be displaced out of ignorance, entropy and illiteracy.
When your socks develop holes, you don't praise them for "morphing".
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No. Definitions of words change. Maxims don't, though perhaps with the end of literacy, people just find it too laborious to understand what the saying means.
Re:I Smell Patent War (Score:5, Insightful)
I am by no means a big fan of Apple or Apple products in general, but for those screaming "anti-trust" Apple is entirely within their right to do this (although whether its the "right" thing to do is questionable) considering A) Apple has nothing near a monopoly over the smartphone market B) A monopoly over one's own product is hardly a monopoly and C) Even if Apple were able to completely supplant Google Latitude among iPhone users, they're not going to be selling their software on the other 90% of smartphones out there anytime soon.
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"Apple makes money on the iPhones when selling it to AT&T or unlocked, a forced 30% cut on all software soft for it and a ~$17 kickback from AT&T from every iPhone user every month. This is one of the reasons they don't want people going to websites and downloading programs."
Yes, Apple makes money selling iPhones. It is a business. If it's part of a subscription, much of the real cost is picked up by AT&T and they paid back by the subscriber. If you buy the phone unlocked, you pay the whole cost
single good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Considering that it generally costs $30-$40k to file a reasonable software patent, even if you're only filing it for potential defensive purposes (which is wise, these days... believe me... BTDT)... its a pretty damn good thing for the patent attorneys.
Not so much for the rest of us.
Re:single good thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
How did this stinker end up as a patent rather than having the actual implementation of said obvious idea?
Re:single good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's my biggest beef with most software patents - the whole idea of the patent is to lay down HOW to do some revolutionary new idea. That's supposed to be the cost of getting your limited monopoly. Software patents usually only give you the what, not the how, and in my opinion should be null. How can I be violating his patent if he never describes how he does it? Or, if it's so simple that they did not need to describe how it is done, how the hell did they get a patent in the first place?
These patents should be loaded with pseudo-code to achieve the stated goals, and if someone comes along who can significantly improve the design of the pseudo-code then they should get a patent too, just like with physical inventions.
That's my opinion. I wouldn't mind software patents if they were treated the same as hardware patents, but they aren't.
Times change (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the day we (including myself) used to get mad at MS for all the anti-competitive things they did.
Now Apple comes along with stuff that MS never dreamed of (or could have got away with) and everybody loves them. Now I get to listen to my friends talk about what a wonderful and cool company Apple is and how they invented everything.
What is going on here?
Not everybody (Score:4, Interesting)
There are many of us who view this stuff poorly. I have not, do not, and will not own any Apple products. I simply do not like their closed platforms and anti-competitive nature, and I certainly won't pay more for the privilege of being restricted. Yes they have some nice hardware, but that in itself cannot overcome their approach to doing business.
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I've got an iPhone. I generally like Apple. I'll admit some of this stuff seems a little ridiculous. I'm not that mad at this, here's why.
Apple tends to make good interfaces, so the Apple app will probably be good. It's not like Google's app is being denied to be replaced with some horrible piece of junk. It could be worse.
But the real thing is while Apple is doing this, it's WAY better than the pre-Apple cell phone world. I can buy a game (like Bejewelled) that connects to Facebook for $3. Games used to
Re:Times change (Score:5, Insightful)
My crappy little free phone can run Google Maps and any of a half-dozen or so other GPS mapping programs that I can download for free. The people that write them don't need my phone manufacturer or cell provider's permission. They can compete with the GPS app that came with the phone. The same is true for web browsers and so many other things. Why is it that when Apple is afraid of the slightest bit of competition and locks it out at every opportunity, people accept it (even for one minute, much less for two years)? Apple's app may be the best thing every made, but if that is the case, it'll be more widely used than Google's on its own merits, not because Apple is afraid to let Google compete with them.
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I'm willing to trade "Apple-yness" for the experience they bring. They're not a monopoly, you can always go WinMo or Android or Symbian. I'm also aware of how much the market has changed as a result of their appearance, much for the better.
Apple came in and took over the cell phone market. Everyone wants to better Apple, the iPhone, the App Store. They are "the" cell phone company right now, so people like to take pot shots at them whenever possible.
OK, the BB/Android/WinMo is more open. Until Apple came
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it's WAY better than the pre-Apple cell phone world
Personally I preferred when phones were just phones.
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Apple didn't invent this!!!
My WinMo smartphones had applications and games available from places like handango years before the iPhone came along.
The app store is not new, it just seems so to johnny come latelys. It's the same with most of iPhones technology. It just seems new to people who weren't paying attention.
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Not everyone is ok with this. I have been an apple fan since day 3, ( since i wasn't out on the west coast back then to have heard of them, it wasn't on day 1 ) and I'm appalled by what is going on.
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I think the people you are referring to exist only in your own mind. Sure, people love Apple - but if you describe to them how their app store policies hurt developers, innovation, and competition pretty much everyone is going to agree that's a bad thing.
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That is a piss poor excuse for any corporate to get away with anti-competitive behavior. But that's the only thing apple fanbois can come up with.
MS - I have to use it at work and I let it be that way. But I have never own an apple product and never will. They are so much worse than MS.
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The big difference is really that Apple does pretty much everything on its own turf - its own OS, running on its own hardware. Microsoft's empire, on the other hand relies on third-party 'partners' and OEMs. And Microsoft has abused those relationships time and time again - and has had the power to destroy companies if they don't behave the way Microsoft tells them to.
Apple does shitty things, but isn't in a position of direct power over other companies - Apple plays with its own toys.
Re:Times change (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple does shitty things, but isn't in a position of direct power over other companies
What was the topic of this story again? Oh yes, that Apple denied Google's app from the app store because it would compete with Apple's own offering. Sounds like power over other companies to me.
But the whole "Microsoft is a monopoly" argument never really worked for me. If both Microsoft and Apple do something that is morally wrong, then more people will be affected by Microsoft. But this doesn't make it less morally wrong for Apple. Not being the monopoly is not a "get out of jail free" card.
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And that is evil because...?
Obviously, the Droid has a pretty cool, free navigation app cooked in with its Google Maps. Are they offering that to other platforms? Just askin'. I'm thinking they might, eventually, after they use their competitive advantage to wipe out Tom Tom and Garmin and Magellan... or "take money away from" these companies. In the old days, giving something that cool away for free (under the cost of production, that's for sure) would have been called "unfair competition." Oh, but Google
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What was the topic of this story again? Oh yes, that Apple denied Google's app from the app store because it would compete with Apple's own offering. Sounds like power over other companies to me.
Apple is preventing Google from adding a feature to Apple's device only. It still sucks, but Apple is not finding ways to prevent Google from creating, selling, or marketing Latitude in any other form, and that is the big difference.
Also, there is a lot less wrong with Apple's products out of the box. Apple's 3-4 incidents of ACTUALLY acting like a heavy-handed monopolistic tyrant and the number of daily inconveniences their users suffer as a result PALES in comparison to even today's Microsoft, let alone 1
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You're chasing a red herring, because Google knew exactly what it was getting into when it signed up to sell applications in the App Store.
It is still power over another company (and direct power if you want to call it that). Why should it matter that they knew that it was a possibility? Do you think that the people who have been screwed by Microsoft didn't know that might happen? Really you are splitting hairs trying to make a distinction.
Any company who is betting their livelihood on a guarantee that their apps will not be rejected by Apple is making a foolish business decision.
That is not practical. Mobile platforms are a perfect market for small developers. Unfortunately they have no choice but to rely on Apple letting them include their software in the official application repos
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They're not even close to the same thing. For one thing, if your hard drive crashes, you can restore from a Time Machine backup drive, but your System Restore checkpoint was destroyed along with the rest of your data. For another, because SR uses the same disk, it is very limited in terms of how far back the backups go.
Yes, the concept of rolling back to a previous version is the same, but then again, the concept of checkpoints/snapshots/restore points has been around for at least a couple of decades in t
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In this free country, you are free not to buy an Apple product. You might try one sometime, though. You'll probably like it more than you allow yourself to.
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That is exactly what happens with most designer brands, they have cheap productions in the third world and then charge premium prices for their goods. I recently saw a doc that the customs office has harder and harder times to identify falsely branded designer stuff, guess why, because in many cases it is the same junk even from the same factories which run night inofficial night shifts.
As for Apple, sometimes maybe even often they have a higher build quality for their products even if they use run of the m
Obviously? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Obviously if Apple is working on their own version of Google Latitude (or owns the IP rights to this functionality), they'd be hesitant to put an app with the same functionality on their devices from another company."
That's not obvious at all to me. It harms the vibrancy of their marketplace, it harms the goodwill of the developer community, and ultimately, it would appear to harm the competitiveness of the device by hindering competition for improved functionality. The only reason they can get away with this BS is because they're Apple, the 900 lb gorilla of the new generation smartphone market at the moment.
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If Apple is a 900 lb gorilla, then Google is a 2 ton elephant. Aren't there already apps on the store that do this kind of thing? I think this is more of a "We can't let Google win" thing. Would they deny Joe Bob Software's "Find-My-Friend" app?
We'll see how this all sorts out, especially with competitive pressure from others companies. People keep saber rattling about getting investigations into this (and we saw that start with G
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Maybe in the US but they are not really the 900lb Gorilla not even remotely worldwide, the Gorilla still is Nokia... They just have the most press coverage with Android currently being close second!
The evil of a closed platform (Score:5, Insightful)
I have an iPhone, and it's a wonderful device, but as soon as my contract runs out (maybe sooner), I'll be moving to a different platform, and this is exactly why.
As long as the iPhone is a closed platform with the only way to get apps through the app store, you will be dealing with this. Apple isn't going to allow competing applications on the device because they simply don't have to. They give a good song and dance about how closed the device is being about the "user experience," but the simple truth is that they don't want competition from other sources. That's their business model, it's how they work.
It's a crying shame, because Apple really is a good company when it comes to style and design, and especially in figuring out exactly what scratches consumers' itches. But this is almost historically identical to what happened with the Macintosh a couple of decades ago. They kept it so closely-held and closed that when the PC came along, which allowed users to shrug off proprietary and use it how they wanted to instead of how some company told them to, Apple damn near went out of business.
I really do hate to see them rebuild their reputation (and market value) again, just to throw it all away like they did last time, but damned if it doesn't look like that's exactly what they're trying to do.
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I really do hate to see them rebuild their reputation (and market value) again, just to throw it all away like they did last time, but damned if it doesn't look like that's exactly what they're trying to do.
Actually, you've got it exactly backwards. Apple nearly went out of business because they went more open and allowed Mac clones. Now that they are (arguably) more closed in that respect, they are extremely successful.
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No, by the time they went to clones, that damage was already done. The Mac was this very expensive solution that didnt do much more than a PC that cost $1,000 less. They couldnt compete and decided to sell clones.
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And the clones were sucking money from the platform without any benefits to the mothership. They got a minute amount of marketshare at the cost of a huge cut in profits. What the hell was that about? Dunderhead accountants were running the company. They had essentially stopped the development of the Mac, going for a profusion of lackluster models that had nothing much going for them.
When Jobs came back, within 6 months it was a going concern.
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Actually, I think it was the success of the iPod that revived them more then the switch back to a closed hardware platform.
But either way, I would argue against the implication that Apple MUST maintain such a closed platform in order to be profitable. I think we all accept that Apple is very good at marketing and execution and that they have the most valuable/cool brand in technology. Yes, the ways that they keep their platform closed and under tight control produce a little extra gravy for the bottom lin
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Who the hell are the majority of sales of iPods to? To Windows users! They made a Windows version of iTunes and Quicktime. They even switched to the crummy USB interface, so Windows users wouldn't have the tsuris of buying a 1394 card.
Hey, I want to try out a Zune. Where the Apple software for that? None? Well, how about the Linux hardware and software? Well, wait a minute. Let me get my compiler fired up and write a few scraps of python.
wrong diagnosis (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, you've got it exactly backwards. Apple nearly went out of business because they went more open and allowed Mac clones. Now that they are (arguably) more closed in that respect, they are extremely successful.
Apple's woes had nothing to do with allowing clones; Apple nearly went out of business because MacOS was a bad, proprietary platform and because Apple was bleeding money at an enormous rate.
Apple is successful now because they have been piggy-backing on open source technologies (Mach, gcc, tons
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Note: just because other problems existed doesn't mean the ones you're seeking to discredit didn't contribute.
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But they immediately, on the return of Jobs, began opening the platform. They adopted USB, which was Intel's, and Wi-Fi, and they phased out proprietary protocols like Appletalk and so on. The "i-Mac" was the "Internet Mac," so hooking up with other computers became a priority. I worked an Intel Mac on an all-Windows network, and it worked, straight out of the box, and did all the basic communications. The Exchange interoperability on the iPhone is serious, though still limited to MS's licensing. The root l
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Right! The last Apple product that i bought was an early Mac. Writing code for it was unnecessarily difficult because Apple was protecting the secrets of the "OS". I used SUN products for a while after that, but since really open systems became available I've used them exclusively. I will do the same thing with phones.
Re:The evil of a closed platform (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple has been asshats since the first Mac, but somehow in the 90's they managed to turn popular opinion around while remaining asshats.
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The assheadness always had a lot to do with the CEO... Apple was open when the designes came from Wozniak he always opted for open system, they then closed everything with the Mac, guess who was at the helm. :-(
Apple again became more open when the CEO was ousted, and now they have become more and more closed again.
As much as I love their OS and their computers, but their attitude becomes worse and worse every year
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Re:The evil of a closed platform (Score:5, Interesting)
Steve Jobs doesn't "hate" using open source. For example, he tried to keep the Objective-C extensions to GCC closed source in violation of the GPL; it took a lot of legal saber rattling by GNU to get him to comply.
Apple is somewhat better now than they were 20 years ago, but they are still taking much more from the open source community than they are giving back. Without FOSS, Apple would be out of business; but even if all of Apple's contributions to FOSS disappeared overnight, people would hardly notice.
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Though Jobs is more closed that Woz, hell, the whole world is. The "openness" of the various colored water salesmen who ran Apple nearly drove it into the ground. Jobs made a huge success by OPENING it. He apparently learned from his mistakes.
Yeah, "assheadedness", right. CEO of the Decade.
Re:The evil of a closed platform (Score:5, Interesting)
>I have an iPhone, and it's a wonderful device, but as soon as my contract runs out (maybe sooner), I'll be moving to a different platform, and this is exactly why.
Same here. Im leaning towards an android phone bought without subsidy and getting on T-mobile's non-subsidized plan for 59.99 unlimited text/data and 500 minutes. Thats about 30 dollars less a month than the equivalent plan on ATT and Im only going to pay an extra 200 dollars down, which pays for itself in less than one year.
>They give a good song and dance about how closed the device is being about the "user experience," but the simple truth is that they don't want competition from other sources.
Turns out history was right: There's no such thing as a benevolent dictator. Turns out centralization from an unaccountable group leads to abuse. Apple is just a thug in the market and with its controlled devices, its helping no one but its bottom line.
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They're not closed. Anybody can submit apps to the store. I'd say you have a better chance getting noticed BECAUSE of the fact that every iPhone owner plugs in his phone to the App store for charging every night. They carry the advertising, the bandwidth, etc. All they've got is a flavor of Unix, and their software development tools are pretty great. If you know your stuff, you can make an app very quickly.
And the iPhone, well, it connects to the 3G network, to Wi-Fi, to Bluetooth, and keeps on expanding it
I completely disagree (Score:3, Informative)
I can distribute any Windows application I want to whomever I want in a multitude of ways to choose from with or without involving a third party in doing so. Is Microsoft open? No, but in that sense, it's a hell of a lot more open than Apple is.
Actually Apple's vetting process for developers is just as stupid as it is for apps. I paid my $99 to Apple to join their developer program. They demanded documentation that I was who I said I was. I sen
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More like reflash to factory condition before returning. Jailbreak analogy is to installing linux.
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I guess I'm an old coot, because I sure as hell DON'T want Latitude on my iPhone. Why the hell would anyone want this privacy-sucking monstrosity? I tried the web app, and cleared it off in minutes.
Re:The evil of a closed platform (Score:5, Informative)
It's been pointed out before that Apple doesn't crackdown on jailbreakers
You mean besides bricking jailbroken phones?
"Bricking" (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean besides bricking jailbroken phones?
For one thing, before people started gratuitously applying the word "bricking" to iPhones, that used to mean an action that rendered a device useless beyond repair, which I've never seen happen to an iPhone. As messed up as it may get, you can almost always get back to a known working state.
For another -- unsurprisingly, updates that expect a given phone state are often unkind to phones in a modified state. Failing to test for and accommodate a hacked phone state
Re:The evil of a closed platform (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been pointed out before that Apple doesn't crackdown on jailbreakers
Other than occasionally pushing out updates with little purpose other than to brick jailbroken phones, you mean.
Besides that, you're right...
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Ah, the martyr.
You SAY the update had little to do with anything but bricking jailbroken phones. Prove it. Which one?
Jailbreaking depends on finding a way to crash the phone, so you can circumvent it and install other code. Those are called vulnerabilities. Naturally Apple will fix these security holes, because if a benign jailbreaker can get in, a nasty guy will.
I hope you change the password on your ssh software that came with the jailbreak.
Fundamental principle (Score:5, Insightful)
No manufacturer has the right to prohibit person A from installing on a device he owns software written by person B: any legal or technological measures to this end are immoral, and ought to be barred by consumer protection laws.
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Or just let the free market take care of it. Unfortunately (in my opinion) this is what the market/consumers want, or at least will tolerate.
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Don't like it, don't buy it, nobody's forcing you - Apple doesn't have anything close to a monopoly.
That's my fundamental principle.
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You realize that legally, that puts a virus on a legal footing.
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No it doesn't. Software installation still requires A's consent.
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Desktop computers have been "extreme" for 25 years then?
There's nothing stopping them now. When you outlaw debuggers, only crackers will have debuggers.
Jailbreak. The world hasn't ended.
There
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Desktop computers have been "extreme" for 25 years then?
Since when has every desktop computer OS been able to run every piece of software written for every other OS? Since when has every desktop computer been able to run every OS?
There are plenty of touchscreen devices out there now. Competition is a good thing. If Apple really has something unique, it can work within the patent and copyright system. Restricting software installation doesn't help defend Apple's works, and hurts users.
That may well be, but how is it not within Apple's rights to decide what software to sell in its own store? The terms and conditions of selling in the App Store are well known to developers up-front when they sign the contracts.
"Intellectual property" isn't property, and violating copyright and patent law isn't "theft".
How is intellectual property not property?
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You're engaging in semantic shifting. There's a difference between being able to run third party programs written for your operating system and being able to run programs written for other operating systems.
Also, intellectual property really isn't property [guardian.co.uk].
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You're engaging in semantic shifting. There's a difference between being able to run third party programs written for your operating system and being able to run programs written for other operating systems.
But you said that preventing software from running via technological measures was immoral. You did not specify that it only applied to software that would otherwise run.
You have to be very careful when proposing things to be codified into law/morality. Because if there was a law or moral code written the way you wrote your proposal, you can bet your bottom dollar that there's a lawyer out there who will argue that not making your OS compatible with his clients software, is a technological measure designed t
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No manufacturer has the right to prohibit person A from installing on a device he owns software written by person B: any legal or technological measures to this end are immoral,
Hmmm, so it's immoral that Windows software can't natively run on Linux? Should the developers of Linux be forced to make Windows .EXE applications compatible, and vice versa?
Fail troll is fail.
The parent was talking about purposefully prohibiting the running of software that would otherwise run. Obviously if there are technical limitation (such as the fact that the software was designed for a different OS) that's an entirely different situation.
The issue here is not that there's a technical limitation stopping the software from being run, but rather, there's an arbitrary block put in place by the developers of the OS.
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Why? The burden is on your users to not remote your safety features. If they do so, you're absolved of liability, so why should you care?
*splat* (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee, that sounds an awful lot like how jailbreaking voids your warranty, DOESN'T IT. What were you complaining about again?
The problem with this particular conspiracy theory (Score:2, Insightful)
is that it requires that the app approvers know what patents Apple has in the process.
This is of course a possibility; it's also a possibility that there's an IP lawyer looking over every submitted (or even ever just-about-to-be-approved) app, for just that kind of thing. But that doesn't really fit with the workflow descriptions that have come out into the open, so I don't think it's very likely.
(It's also possible that he reviewers are given general directions occasionally, such as, "All Google-submitted
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is that it requires that the app approvers know what patents Apple has in the process.
...or far more likely it could mean that approves have a list of gidelines in which they refer to when approving apps, and those gidelines forbid certain kinds of apps, such as those that allow tethering or ones that show the presence of friends on a map that Latitude offers. I don't see why it would require anyone to be in the know of internal app development there.
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I don't think it necessarily has to be the way you're describing.
Seems to me the easiest way to implement such a policy at Apple would be to draw up a set of rules for reviewers to follow, something like this:
1. If an app is a dialer, deny it because it duplicates dialer functionality
2. If the app contains Apple logos, deny it because it infringes our trademarks
etc.
with an entry for
X. If the app contains a way to place the user's friends on a map, deny it because it duplicates functionality.
No need for revi
Nokia Friend View (Score:2)
DidnMt Nokia have such a product long before Google?
My device (Score:5, Insightful)
"they'd be hesitant to put an app with the same functionality on their devices"
But, you see, it's my device. I bought it. I'd like to be able to choose between the Google product and the Apple product and use the best one.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except you already made the choice, when you bought the iPhone... Too late now! ;)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But.. you see.. it's their store. They paid for it. They can choose what they want to sell.
If the device is tightly bound to the store and you knew that ahead of time (as well you should have), then it's rather your fault for purchasing the device, isn't it. Caveat emptor, and all that.
Equivalency (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Equivalency (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it's not like Microsoft explicitly aded code to DOS to prevent Lotus 123 from running under the motto "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run". Oh wait, they did.
These days they stick to FUD instead of code, thankfully. Maye because they were one presidential election away from an antitrust conviction back when Bush Jr. came into the office?
A more likely reason? (Score:3, Insightful)
Google's app was probably full of Googlish "we will scrape all info we can find on your device and send to or servers just in case" features that Google fans seem to find a shedload of excuses for.
Re: (Score:2)
That's alright. They probably balance out those who come to bash Apple with no excuses at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds a hell of a lot like APRS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Packet_Reporting_System [wikipedia.org]
http://www.aprs.org/ [aprs.org]
http://ibcnu.us/ [ibcnu.us] -- aprs iphone app
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Good luck on keeping any American tech corporation in business.