Google has already sidestepped most of Apple’s interface-behavior patents with the newest versions of Android, which might eventually be used by more than a handful of customers. And Android is much more of an
iPhone-ripoff“iOS-inspired platform” than Windows 8, which has avoided almost all relevant Apple patents.What’s really going to disrupt the iPhone is going to be something completely different, not something that tries so hard to clone the iPhone that it hits Apple’s patents.
Unoriginal manufacturers will need to pay for their unoriginality. The most reasonable course of action, therefore, is to truly innovate and design products that aren’t such close copies.
I fail to see how consumers lose.
I was going to put together a whole response outlining exactly how consumers lose, but that seems like it would take a long time, so I’ll just let well-read developer and technology enthusiast, er, Marco Arment take the lead:
Someone figures out a great new technique to use on a shopping site, they benefit immediately, then everyone else adopts it and they benefit, too.
I figured out lots of ways to detect “body” text for Instapaper’s text parser and patented none of them. Many others figured out the same metrics before and after I did and made similar text parsers. We all benefitted.
I invented many useful behaviors in the Instapaper bookmarklet. Many of those have been copied, too. And I bet I thought I “invented” something that someone else had already done years ago. Lots of people have done the same things as lots of other people in software without acquiring or wielding patents.
The entire software industry works like this, and the use of patents is very rare relative to all software that’s written. The market rewards applied innovation, but doesn’t try to artificially inhibit competition. It combines the best parts of capitalism, collaboration, and a vast public domain.
Is a world in which only Marco can take advantage of his methods better than one in which multiple competitors can take advantage of them as well? Is a world in which Marco has to check out if his methods were patented before he implements them better than the world in which he can simply implement them? I think it’s clear that Marco and, more importantly, his consumers are better off in a world in which Marco and his competitors can innovate and build on their innovations without fear of billion dollar verdicts.
That’s how consumers lose.
]]>“If Microsoft … is going to do hardware business, what should we do? Should we still rely on Microsoft, or should we find other alternatives?,” [Acer president] Mr Kan said.
Here’s the problem for Acer and all the other PC makers — what alternatives? Linux? No one wants it. Android? Google’s in the hardware business now too. That’s why Microsoft can make this play — the PC makers have no leverage.
I wouldn’t put it quite that way. The PC makers don’t have no leverage: they could always get out of the PC-making business. In fact, I think that’s part of what Microsoft’s scared of, that in two or three more years of next to no profitability in the commoditized hardware game there won’t be any players left. Someone has to buy all those OEM copies of Windows.
]]>All of those at the anti-doping frontline acknowledge they are in an “arms race” with those willing to cheat. Shortly before the Games, for example, a new test for Human Growth Hormone – previously very difficult to detect as it is naturally occurring – expanded the window for a positive test from a few days to a few weeks. Wada is working with pharmaceutical giants such as GSK to develop tests for new substances that have genuine medical uses but could also enhance performances.
Wada is also calling for more help from governments around the world, not only to maintain their funding but to criminalise the supply of performance-enhancing drugs.
According to those on the frontline, the focus is becoming as much on education of young athletes – trying to convince them that the risks vastly outweigh the rewards – and on intelligence-led initiatives. Working with Interpol and local law enforcement agencies, Wada hopes to target the networks behind the supply of illicit substances and the pyramid of influences behind the athletes in the hope of cutting the supply and reducing their power.
Isn’t it the case, though, that the rewards vastly outweigh the risks? As WADA itself acknowledges, something like HGH is naturally occuring. Obviously there are many substances in your body that occur naturally that you wouldn’t want a too terribly high concentration of, but is there any evidence that HGH is one of them? And the rewards are, literally, fame and fortune, something these athletes have been working all their lives for.
There’s an unmistakable moralism about doping allegations across any sport. Elsewhere in the article, David Howman, the director general of WADA, distressed about the increasing percentages of athletes “cheating” and not getting caught. He frets, “If more than 10% of the athletes in the world are being tempted to take a shortcut via taking prohibited substances then we’ve got an issue that is not being confronted as well as it should be.”
“Shortcut.”
I don’t want to question your fitness, but I know that the world’s supply of HGH wouldn’t help me get any closer to beating Michael Phelps in a pool. For elite athletes, PEDs aren’t shortcuts to better performance. They’re the difference between best possible performance and bestest possible performance.
Besides which, if WADA is in an arms-race it knows it can’t win, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop policing the athletes. Let them take whatever they can take. Adults can make their own decisions about risk and reward. I’d rather see an agency devoted to stopping doping among younger competitors by having a zero tolerance policy for coaches that encourage the use of PEDs or procure PEDs for their athletes.
]]>It’s nice to finally meet you. I don’t believe I’ve ever felt as good as I do right now.
Kyle Steed goes on.
I’m not quite there. But I’m very close.
]]>He said he didn’t have the “guts to hold on to Google when it crossed $200. Same with Apple; I cashed out. My strategy for Facebook is not to worry or read the news. This is a long-term hold.”
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Past performance of other companies is certainly no guarantee of future results.
But, no, we should definitely all manage our own retirement accounts. Social Security’s just a Ponzi scheme.
]]>A move up from the iPhone’s persistent 3.5-inch form factor has started to feel overdue in the current climate of 4.7- and 4.8-inch flagship Android smartphones, so this may finally be a sign of the Cupertino company relenting and giving in to popular demand.
The iPhone outsold all Android phones at AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon last quarter. Apple may be increasing the iPhone’s screen size, but it won’t be because the public are demanding it.
]]>In a recent filing, Cupertino's attorneys accused Samsung of allowing large amounts of evidence to be destroyed in what it paints as a pattern Samsung has followed across several different lawsuits. The motion itself is heavily redacted, but in what we can read Apple cites prior cases from 2010 and 2011 where Samsung was sanctioned for continuing its policy of deleting emails every two weeks — even though it had an obligation to preserve them.
… .
Unsurprisingly, Samsung sees things differently, characterizing Apple's claims as "baseless" and "speculation."
That's rich. Of course Apple has to speculate about the content of the emails: Samsung's destruction of said emails is what requires the speculation! If Samsung hadn't destroyed the evidence, Apple wouldn't have to speculate.
In other legal news, Apple has yet to respond to Samsung's repeated requests for why Apple keeps hitting itself.
]]>