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I've said this before and I'll say it again. One of the villains in this piece is Apple. Many of the people reading this comment are talented engineers. What Ap
by MBlume 14y ago
I've said this before and I'll say it again. One of the villains in this piece is Apple. Many of the people reading this comment are talented engineers. What Apple needs to survive, more than anything, are talented engineers. So don't work at Apple. Don't work for companies that compromise ethics in this way.
There's a reason Microsoft has been failing to compete for a while. It's because its practices got so evil that if you got offered a job there, your friends would make ha-ha-only-serious jokes about you going to work for Darth Vader. And so the best engineers, the one with options, went looking elsewhere. We need a culture like this now around Oracle, around Apple.
- nichrome 14y agoI don't agree that public shaming is the primary reason for Microsoft's demise -- there are lots of people who are attracted to work for the least ethical firms, just like Wall Street. But, I agree with you, there should be more shaming when working for certain companies or in certain jobs. For instance, the companies that produce internet filters that are suitable for monitoring the traffic of entire countries.
- kvnn 14y agoI mean, take a look at this quote: The founders of the company marketing this app are speech-language pathologists who were trained by PRC, and who used their knowledge of the Unity system to develop a Unity-like app of their own and market it in the Apple iTunes store. If PRC was able to prove that to Apple, you hadn't read the OP but PRC had posted something about how people they trained stole their technology, would you direct the word "villain" towards Apple, PRC, or the makers of SpeakForYourself? If I had a choice I'd keep the app on the app store. But, its important to keep a cool head and consider things objectively. Source: http://www.facebook.com/PrentkeRomichCompany http://www.facebook.com/PrentkeRomichCompany
- jemfinch 14y agoAbsent a court-ordered injuction, Apple has no obligation to read, let alone give credence to anyone's claims in this matter, and that's exactly what they should have done: let the courts sort it out. Make PRC get the injuction, don't just give it to them for free.
- incongruity 14y agoExactly this. Apple is, IMHO, in the wrong here because they have acted in advance of a court decision, thereby making themselves the arbiter of a patent claim, not the courts. Actions like this only serve to highlight the dangers with the walled-garden approach... or maybe, better said, by acting in this way, Apple makes the walled-garden of iOS a less attractive environment for developers and reduces the motivation to innovate using their platform.
- artichokeheart 14y agoYes Apple is in the wrong but (and possibly I'm giving them too much credit in terms of their corporate unity) maybe their actions are an effort to not weaken the veracity of their own patent claims. Whereby any leniency shown by Apple in the case of other entities patent claims could be used in court against Apple when they are defending their own.
- adaml_623 14y agoApple has done it because they are getting 30% of the sale fee from software that is potentially infringing someone's patent. They could be sued for that quite easily if the makers of SfY went bankrupt. It's a no brainer for a corporate heirarchy to choose to pull it from the store. Doesn't make it ethically squeaky clean.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- masklinn 14y agoThey don't have any obligation to do so, but in most case you'll probably want them to: you built an application on your own, over 6 months of your life, and a guy cracked, replicated and uploaded it. Surely you'll want his app thrown out even without having to go through court won't you?
- 14y ago
- prodigal_erik 14y agoApple's needlessly abusive design is the sole reason you don't have that choice. They reserved for themselves the power to obstruct the author's use of her own tools, which should be a human right second only to food and shelter.
- kvnn 14y agoApple doesn't obstruct her from using Android. Again, I vote that the app stays up. But you are being silly by portraying Apple as evil.
- lukeschlather 14y agoDon't Apple devices have locked bootloaders? I think it's a little disingenuous to say that Apple doesn't obstruct her from using Android when they have gone to a lot of trouble to ensure you can't run Android on an iPad. (Not to say you can't, but Apple has intentionally put up barriers to prevent it.)
- kvnn 14y agoI meant what I said more literally than you took it. Apple doesn't obstruct her from using Android. She can choose not to use Apple products. Edit: keep in mind this is what I was replying to: They reserved for themselves the power to obstruct the author's use of her own tools, which should be a human right second only to food and shelter.
- lukeschlather 14y agoApple doesn't own the product; they sold it to her, and shouldn't obstruct her from using it as she sees fit. Your sentiment seems to imply that no one actually buys anything from Apple, they merely rent, and Apple rightly has the final say over how the renter uses the product. I don't see how the idea that she can simply choose to use another product really makes sense unless she's renting it.
- 14y ago
- billpatrianakos 14y agoIt is important to keep a cool head and consider things objectively. That's why I think it's manipulative to inject emotion into this like the post does. It's one thing to empathize with this poor mother and quite another to consider the facts and have an honest, serious discussion. What has happened to this family is awful. There's no question about that and I feel just as bad for them as anyone. But now we can't expect anyone to keep a cool head because of the way the issue was presented. Injecting emotion into the discussion is manipulative and effectively halts any critical thinking that might have gone on otherwise.
- btbuilder 14y agoI think the emotional price paid by this family is part of the discussion, however.
- jordo37 14y agoDisagree. In the comments on HN we are free to discuss this without emotion, or referring to emotion but keeping it in check with logical arguments that respect the system, the inventor(s) and the critical user. I find it unreasonable to expect a mother, on her personal blog, to keep the same detached sentiment when her child's literal voice is threatened.
- rwallace 14y agoEmotion is not an inherently bad thing. It has a bad name among us geeks because it sometimes creeps into purely technical discussions where it has no place, to be sure. But when an unjust law is used to perpetrate evil - and make no mistake, that's what's happening here - the emotion of anger is entirely justified and appropriate.
- 6ren 14y agoA simpler explanation is that Microsoft's fortunes are tied to the PC. As that market matured, so did MS's profits. Now PC's are being disrupted by ARM/touch/mobile devices and their OS's, and MS is not dominating that area - just as Christensen's theory predicts. Of course, you'll be happier working for a company you like. Note 1: MS made $5.11B profit last year. Note 2: Apple's star is rising with the new devices.
- adventureful 14y agoJust a small note: MS made $5.1b in profit last quarter, and $23.1b in profit for its fiscal 2011 year.
- taligent 14y agoI would definitely add Google to that list as well. Their continued support of Motorola Mobility's behaviour in abusing FRAND rules is unconscionable and has the ability to undermine the entire industry.
- air 14y agoI really feel you are grasping straws there. Motorola is only defending itself against Microsoft's patent attack.
- mbreese 14y agoExcept, as far as I know, Motorola is leveraging FRAND, standards necessary patents and Microsoft wasn't. There is a large difference.
- pgeorgi 14y agoHow comes that the VFAT patent (held my Microsoft) is not considered FRAND? After all, it's part of the UEFI specs, SD card specs, and so on. And what about the new exFAT stuff (required for some of the newer SD specs, SDXC or something like that)? Microsoft certainly leverages those (esp. the VFAT stuff) against Linux in general, and Android specifically.
- mbreese 14y agoIt is all about the dtandards body. I don't know which orgs are responsible for UEFI specs and SD format specs. It's up to the standards body to demand FRAND licensing. There aren't any international standards that demand a vfat file system, are there? Are the vfat patents still in force, because I haven't payed anyone for those on any of my Linux systems. Is SD an ISO standard or just a consortium standard? (I don't know) I'm not trying to say Microsoft has the cleanest hands with respect to patents, but in this case, it seems clear cut.
- fpgeek 14y ago