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Steve Jobs: “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”
- channelmeter 15y ago"I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this"
- exit 15y agowhat's his case against google docs?
- beej71 15y agoIt concerns iWork, I'm nearly certain.
- aphexairlines 15y ago"Jobs used an expletive to describe Android and Google Docs" -- maybe the writer just means he described Android and Docs as crap.
- joebadmo 15y agoSteve Jobs: "Picasso had a saying, 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
- rsl7 15y agoThis is the same as the old saying about teaching someone to fish versus given them a fish. To steal is to make it your own, to so thoroughly understand it that you can move it forward as if it was always yours. To copy is to simply have it for today without having the understanding it takes to have had the idea in the first place, and so you can't go forward.
- joenathan 15y agoGood job, you copied the highest rated youtube comment on the link.
- edash 15y agoRelated: The Love Affair Between Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso http://gizmodo.com/5727913/the-love-affair-between-steve-jobs-and-pablo-picasso http://gizmodo.com/5727913/the-love-affair-between-steve-job...
- gruseom 15y agoIt wasn't Picasso, but T. S. Eliot. And "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" (another Jobs favorite) was said not by Leonardo, but by William Gaddis.
- rustyuf 15y agoAlmost as if his core operating system doesn't copy FreeBSD.
- fpgeek 15y agoAndy Rubin: "Why don't we have a chat about everything you stole from the Danger Hiptop?"
- tptacek 15y agoSome context that may be helpful for nerds whose heads are exploding at the idea that Google "stole" iOS (which is based on FreeBSD, which is inspired by Danger, &c &c): Schmidt was on Apple's board, apparently never disclosed his intent for Google to go head-to-head with Apple on an extremely similar product, and was surely privy to many confidential details about Apple's product plans.
- fpgeek 15y agoHere's the thing: If it was such a big problem, why was Schmidt allowed to join Apple's board in the first place? Schmidt was elected to Apple's board in August 2006, a year after Google bought Android (and over a year after Apple started work on the iPhone). Unlike Apple, Google's smartphone ambitions weren't secret. Could they seriously expect Schmidt to file everything he learned about Apple's smartphone plans in an unmarked section of his brain that he didn't use when he was at his day job?
- Kadrith 15y agoI thought Schmidt also left the room when they discussed the iPhone.
- Steko 15y ago"Google's smartphone ambitions weren't secret." Techcrunch the day Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's board: "back in August 2006 when he took the seat Google had virtually nothing even remotely competing with Apple’s core products and services. " http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/03/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-resigns-from-apple-board-surprised/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/03/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-res...
- Kylekramer 15y agoConsidering both the iPhone and Android were still in development at the time, the statement holds true. If potential products stopped CEOs from joining other companies' boards, then no one outside the company could ever join a board.
- fpgeek 15y agoJobs: "I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want." This is a dangerously broken and, for Jobs, hypocritical idea. Where would Apple and the rest of us be today if Audio Highway or Diamond "owned" the idea of an MP3 player? If Microsoft "owned" the idea of a tablet computer? If Ericsson "owned" the idea of a touchscreen smartphone? This, of course, is what is broken about software patents today. We're handing out ownership stakes in pure ideas within a system intended to protect realized, specific implementations.
- sliverstorm 15y agoOr if Motorola owned the idea of a cellular phone.
- raganwald 15y agoWe're handing out ownership stakes in pure ideas within a system intended to protect realized, specific implementations I’d say the iPhone contain specific, realized ideas. Thus, I challenge this statement. To me, if you can’t accept Apple patenting the specific, tangible things they do to make the specific, shipping products they sell, you might as well join me over here in saying that all patents are broken. They’ve solved an awful lot of problems at one infinite loop. I’m sure they have filed plenty of overly broad patents, and plenty where you can toss out half or more of the claims, but like Microsoft, they have pumped billions into R&D that has resulted in actual products with discernible differences from what came before them. Apple is neither a patent troll nor is it a copycat shop like most of the PC manufacturers. If Apple doesn’t deserve patent protection, nobody does. And yes, I’m perfectly fine with the idea that nobody does.
- statictype 15y agoA lot of software patents are bogus but honestly, a lot of what Apple has done with multitouch is genuinely innovative and I can understand why Jobs would be offended that others are copying their ideas. Hell, we might actually have seen more innovation in the mobile space if competitors weren't so quick to copy what Apple has done. Having said that, it's also hypocritical to an extent for Steve Jobs to complain about stealing good ideas. I'm sure everyone here has read the folklore.org bit about Bill Gates telling Jobs that they both stole from their neighbor...
- Steko 15y agoContext is important. To me this seems like a quote from Jobs at his angriest after he felt like he had been stabbed in the back by Schmidt.
- wavephorm 15y agoThe iPhone was stolen from Compaq's iPaq and Microsoft Windows CE/Mobile. Bill Gates should've been the one who was angry.
- arron61 15y agoApple steals good ideas and improves upon them all the time. Does he have to hold such a grudge? A bit ridiculous and a bit petty.
- kondro 15y agoI think it is the lack of "improving on them" part that he had a problem with.
- Kylekramer 15y agoSeems more to be about multitouch than Android itself considering the rant was following early 2010 HTC phones, which if my memory serves were among the first American Androids to have multitouch. After all, the G1 and Droid were out for a while before that. And there was a strange period where Android devices were capable of multitouch, but it wasn't enabled in American devices. All signs pointed to a sort of gentlemen's agreement between Google and Apple. I don't really buy into the Eric Schmidt as mole theory, but I can easily see two at one point close partners making a non-binding agreement that over time became untenable for Google. I can see Jobs getting angry about that, especially since he always seemed very proud and protective ("and boy have we patented it!") of the iPhone's multitouch. It strikes me as more than a tad hypocritical, but the personal betrayal might explain the reaction.
- pinwale 15y agoBefore the iPhone came out (and it's glass-slab form factor), the Android cellphone prototypes looked a lot like Blackberry clones. However after the iPhone was announced, Google apparently switched to the slab form factor with a twist and produced the G1 with HTC. In 2010, Google started making glass-slab phones with Google branding. Whether or not that is "stealing" is another debate; however, it wasn't until the original iPhone arrived that the slab form factor became ubiquitous.
- joshu 15y agoThe HTC Sooner: http://i566.photobucket.com/albums/ss109/5y24r/exca300/800px-GoogleHTCG1withSooner.jpg http://i566.photobucket.com/albums/ss109/5y24r/exca300/800px...
- staunch 15y agoEric Schmidt was friends with Steve Jobs, got insider info on Apple's efforts, then started an "open" competitor to the iPhone with Android. Bill Gates was friends with Steve Jobs, got insider info on Apple's efforts, then started an "open" competitor to the Macintosh with Windows. Steve Jobs inspires and educates his friends so profoundly that they become his enemies.
- arron61 15y agoAndroid was bought behind Eric Schmidt's back by Larry And Segery. Andy Rubin went and pitched it to them to buy Android. There is no proof that Eric Schmidt got insider information. Android had been in development for awhile and was only changed to be more of a touch screen after the iphone got released.
- staunch 15y ago1. Android would have ended up nothing like it is today if not for the iPhone. It would have been the best of a bunch of crappy smart phones. Phones like this: http://news.cnet.com/i/ne/p/2008/android_prototype_550x385.jpg http://news.cnet.com/i/ne/p/2008/android_prototype_550x385.j... 2. Eric Schmidt was the CEO of Google at the time. It's obvious that his position on the board of Apple and foreknowledge of the iPhone gave him a huge advantage.
- wvenable 15y agoGiven that companies like HTC were producing both touch based phones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Touch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Touch) and keyboard phones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Wings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Wings) all around the same time -- it stands to reason that Android would be planning to support both (especially since even before the iPhone, the touch models were more popular).
- staunch 15y agoThere were other (much crappier) GUIs when the Macintosh launched too.
- antidaily 15y agoAll these quotes coming out are really starting to tarnish my opinion of the man. It's annoying.
- guelo 15y agoThe much more informative original AP article http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5izacIaKf2hT_w5hDjmST8YtIM4Hw?docId=a5654bae694f41acbd6041476daf2a65 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5izacIaKf2h...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- martythemaniak 15y agoHe was a hypocrite - he took lots of other people's ideas and profited from them. He then proceeded to brag about it - "Good artists copy, great artists steal". Your white-wash attempt simply doesn't stand up to the facts. On that note, I'm really glad Android is spreading like wildfire. It will be the dominant OS this decade and the way the majority of the world's population (not just the status-conscious and some Westerners) interacts with their most personal computing device. A feat Jobs could never achieve, either with the Mac, nor iOS.
- ellyagg 15y agoHmmm, didn't realize someone had already responded to this. Don't know what you mean about white-wash. If there's something specific about the reasoning you disagree with, feel free to point it out. Regarding the gotcha quotation: I'm pretty sure you don't understand what Jobs meant by "stealing". Presumably you don't understand what Picasso meant by stealing, as he didn't do anything analogous to copying his competitors' designs. Jobs always wanted to be seen as doing something the world had never seen before, to wow audiences. It's hard for me to imagine that you think Jobs wanted to be a copycat. Here is the comment I deleted: I see a lot of folks say, "Jobs is a hypocrite, Apple has stolen lots of stuff." This continues to be edifying only on a superficial level. Context continues to matter. You may believe that software patents are bad. You may even believe that patents are bad. But please don't pretend that some people's use of innovative ideas aren't more important and more credit worthy than others. The public doesn't believe this and you probably don't either, if you think carefully about it. The world is a chaotic, ambiguous place, but that hasn't prevented us from judging whether entities in specified circumstances have stolen ideas from others. For example, I understand that Carlos Mencia is derided in the comedy community for being a joke their. No one believes that you shouldn't be able to stand on the shoulders of giants. For example, the claim that Jobs is hypocritical because OS X is based on BSD is a non-starter. BSD was used with permission, legally and morally. Put yourself in Jobs' shoes. You spend every waking moment to bring something wonderful and new to the world. You pour your sweat and love and passion into it. You trust people. And one of the people you trust starts competing against you directly AND copying your work down to a pretty fine detail. This wouldn't bother you? We're not talking about Robin Hood here. We're not talking about a charity or not for profit corporation with a transparently open source project. We're talking about another company taking your ideas to make money for themselves. If you ask a normal person on the street who copied whom in the smartphone business, they'll say Android copied iPhone. And they'll be right. And that's why Jobs was mad.
- joejohnson 15y agoAndroid stole inertial scrolling. The app store. Multitouch user interface. Mobile Safari. The entire blueprint for Apples touch based interface design. They copied everything which MADE an iPhone an iPhone. The notification system, or whatever other "features" the Fandroids claim Apple stole from Android is not what made Android. The things that made Android were the same exact things as the iPhone. Mobile browser, multitouch interface, and apps. All the things that Apple designed. All you need to do is look at Android in 2006, and Android today. Googles goal with Android back then was to use it on dumb phones and feature phones. To bring Google to every cell phone. That's what they would tell Jobs and Forstall, while behind their backs stealing the iPhone design.
- homosaur 15y agoMultitouch was inevitable and demonstrated long before the iPhone. Mobile browsers existed long before the iPhone. What the iPhone did was have enough juice to run a real browser correctly. They did a good job on mobile Safari, but this is not a mind boggling invention. App Stores? Are you kidding? I had app stores on my smart phones for years. Yeah they sucked, but Apple didn't invent it, they just made it better. Inertial scrolling, yeah, that's a good call, and the only one you mentioned that's a legitimate invention.
- arn 15y agoI'm not so sure multi-touch was inevitable. I mean, as a general concept perhaps. But the trend for phone during the time that the iPhone was released was tiny-keyboards. It was the Blackberry era. It's no accident that 2006 era Android protoypes looked like Blackberrys. Jobs made a point that they were going to do away with that, and go full screen multitouch. It wasn't obvious and there were a lot of skeptics about giving up a physical keyboard. Typing on a screen just hadn't been done sucessfully. You say this is obvious now, but what phone did you own in early 2007? I had a Palm Treo.... with a keyboard.
- jarek 15y ago> It was the Blackberry era. In North America.
- SkyMarshal 15y ago"In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, Calif., cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn’t interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says. “I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.” The meeting, Isaacson wrote, resolved nothing." I've overheard quite a few conversations in random Silicon Valley cafes, from startup pitches, to arguments over money, to people detailing their health problems. Given how open people are around here about discussing anything and everything in public, seemingly no filter, that would have been an interesting meeting to have randomly witnessed.
- adamjernst 15y agoSomeone did. I remember seeing it on Macrumors at the time. They only overheard snippets, after which one of the two said "Let's take this someplace more private".
- acak 15y agoOriginal article with more info: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Jobs-questioned-authority-all-apf-1873950574.html?x=0 http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Jobs-questioned-authority-all-...
- jroseattle 15y agoFunny how "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" turns into "this was stolen". I would sympathize with Mr. Jobs here if his company wasn't the most valuable in the world, that continues to deliver record-breaking profits and generates enough wealth to make many a small nation jealous. My point is not that Apple deserves to be ripped off because they're flush, but rather that customers know the difference between great products and obvious imitations. Those same customers are the ones contributing to the incredible wealth creation around Apple. In short: when you're the heavyweight, don't sweat the knockoffs.
- dasil003 15y agoI couldn't agree more. If this report is true it makes me sad that Jobs would take this so personally. The iPhone and iPad were brilliant products that Jobs should have been proud of. They were so far ahead of the competition that it's inevitable that others would copy. It's not like this is the first time Apple has been copied. Everyone at Apple should be proud to have helped create the future, even if it is dominated by knockoffs, it's not like it's hurting Apple's bottom line to their detriment. To the contrary, having Android snapping at its heels has got to be pushing Apple to continue to innovate and do better. I would like to think that's what Jobs' vision would have been, and that taking personal offense at the copycats was just a knee-jerk response that would have mellowed over time.
- toddh 15y agoRome always found a pretext for conquering a new territory. They never destroyed without first find a "reason" that would excuse their violence. Sounds like Jobs follows the Roman example.
- kalleboo 15y agoImagine if Steve Jobs had destroyed Windows back in the day because it was "a stolen product". Say what you want about Microsoft and Windows (I've been a die-hard Mac fan since birth), but they really drove the global personal computer revolution. If it wasn't for Microsoft competing with Apple, we would be so far behind where we are today. E.g. Steve Jobs resisted making a computer with a separate monitor so hard, that if he wasn't pushed out of the company, Apple would never have released the Mac II. Now imagine that in a world where Apple also had a monopoly on the GUI. Competition is good! Copy things and improve upon them, that's how we move forward.
- serge2k 15y ago"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, " He did and he lost.
- linuxhansl 15y agoJust continue to strive to build the best device... This idea of stolen design makes no sense. Should patents on dropdowns be allowed, how how buttons, windows, hyperlinks, menus, etc, etc? Or how about cellphones itself? Should car manufacturers learn from each other? Somebody copied gears, automatic transmission, catalytic converters, airbags, radios, sun roofs, convertibles, etc. Somebody has an idea, others follow. That's how it should work. That's how we get the best products. That is how we keep competing. It's not that Android stole iOS code or something. The idea of multitouch does not have much value (in the sense that a lot of money was spent on it, something had a great idea), the value is the implementation.