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As I type on my MacBook Pro, I also wonder at what point we as a community are going to start voting with our wallets against Apple and the extent to which they

As I type on my MacBook Pro, I also wonder at what point we as a community are going to start voting with our wallets against Apple and the extent to which they are abusing the broken US patent system. Of course it's only rational to expect that they will use any means at their disposal to get a competitive advantage, but that doesn't mean that we must reserve moral judgment. For me, Apple has already moved into "prefer competitors' products" territory, but they keep pushing me closer to all-out boycott.

kunai 13y ago
People don't care about their despotic and toxic environment for the little guys or competitors because they have the best products. That seems to be changing as Android increases in marketshare every day, and Ultrabooks are taking off while Mac marketshare generally has remained stagnant over the past 8 quarters. So, it seems like we already are moving away from Apple. The only thing they can do is now rely on petty lawsuits that damage their reputation in the engineer/tech community, which will hurt them in the long run even more so. The best way to fight it is to fund startups that have a focus on open systems and a proven commitment to free open software. Currently, the the hardware market is controlled by a few very, very large OEMs. Slowly, though, PCB and fab is opening up to many more people besides Samsung, LG, et al. Especially with Kickstarter, I don't see it likely that we will still have a hardware oligopoly in the next 5 years. More boutique manufacturers will spring up, and like it has for desktops, mobile hardware will open up. The next step after that is to reform the broken US patent system so gorillas like Apple and Microsoft can't abuse it.
- gibwell 13y ago
  Gorillas like Samsung, Google, Apple, and Microsoft, you mean. All of them are guilty. Moving away from Apple simply means intentionally creating a Samsung/Google duopoly, which is insane.
josephlord 13y ago
And where would you go if you were to boycott Apple over the actions you deem to be "abusing the broken US patent system". I think Google/Motorola and Samsung have behaved far worse when they attempted to obtain injuctions and excessive licensing fees over patents that they had committed to license on FRAND terms. Microsoft has a horrible history of anticompetive behavior. Maybe Blackberry phone and linux based computer would be an acceptable route although I'm not sure how long Blackberry will be making competitive products and there is a fairly limited choice of PCs shipping without Windows.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  That would be BlackBerry whose current value is largely in the patents they hold...
  - josephlord 13y ago
    Yeah, but I haven't seen that many accusations of Blackberry "abusing" them. If that does rule them out it makes it really hard to see what a good choice would be if you are boycotting Apple over their patent (ab)use. I guess Firefox OS or something like that if you could find the right manufacturer but your choice is getting really quite slim.
- kondor6c 13y ago
  As far as phones go, perhaps FirefoxOS when it matures more. Too bad the OpenMoko project never picked up enough speed. If that really doesn't work, then there are several attempts to use a pure ASOP on other phones like the HTC One or something like that.
- Prefinem 13y ago
  You may think that Google and Samsung are worse because of FRAND, but the fact is that Apple by its very nature is more dangerous because of their closed system. If Google wins a patent, with it's open source AOSP, then guess what, anyone can use it. If Apple wins a patent, guess what, everyone has to pay for it. This is horrible for users and businesses and is evil in nature. As for Samsung, they are fighting back against Apple for the most part, and do so however they can.
  - gibwell 13y ago
    Sadly not true. Google is moving most new Android development into tightly controlled closed source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-... And portraying Samsung as the victim is absurd, they are one of the worlds most aggressive companies.
shmerl 13y ago
> I also wonder at what point we as a community are going to start voting with our wallets against Apple and the extent to which they are abusing the broken US patent system. Good question. I never used any Apple products and never will. While they definitely made others try to compete with them, at the same time they held back many important technologies. For example audio and video codecs. Why don't we see open codecs gaining wider adoption in hardware and on the Web? Apple is the culprit. Try to find a hardware player which supports Vorbis (and also has characteristics that you need), or try to explain to an Apple user while your OGG/Vorbis audio or WebM video doesn't play in their iPod or Safari. It's quite irritating when some control the technology because of their greed and hold back the innovation which they claim to embrace.
- josephlord 13y ago
  Vorbis doesn't have hardware support on many chipsets which means that battery life would not be as good as for MP3/AAC. I find it quite hard to see Apple as evil for implementing International Standards and while they are not free (or Free software compatible) they are open. There are plenty of good reasons for not adding support to additional codecs without good reason to. 1) Different (and confusing) compatibility depending on the exact model of your product. 2) Need to keep support indefinitely otherwise you cut off previously supported content in people's libraries. People get far more annoyed when you take something away that if you never enabled it. 3) If you have Apple's scale and people will encode to your format anyway a narrow minimal range of formats supported will reduce debugging and handling of edge cases and file types. Free codecs are a niche concern, almost all users get them [edit: by "them" I meant AAC/AVC/MPEG4] free from their OS provider and in the trickier cases like Linux there are plenty of sources for open source codecs that you can obtain as packages for nearly every distro. AFAIK there has never been any legal action to try to prevent these packages being distributed. So in practice using Free codecs is an ideological decision in most cases and very few people care (I used to but I got over it, the AVC and AAC licenses really aren't that bad if you read them).
  - shmerl 13y ago
    Adding Vorbis in hardware is not hard. The reason it's not usually added is because of Apple precisely, since they are one of the major manufacturers of hardware players. I.e. if they'd add support for Vorbis, it will become widespread pretty soon. So your argument is reversed. And, in mobile SoCs it is gaining traction now, because of Google and WebM. Hardware players are a bigger problem. 1) There is nothing confusing about codecs support. Just specify what's supported. Sansa players list supported codecs which include Vorbis and FLAC for example. 2) So what? Keep it as much as you want. What's the problem with that? 3) Barring newer and better codecs from adoption because of "debugging burden" is just ridiculous. > Free codecs are a niche concern, almost all users get them free from their OS provider So, how do OS X or iOS users get it from Apple? They don't. And that's the reason why HTML5 audio and video is such a mess. Apple know perfectly that they cause it, and they don't care, because they are jerks.
gibwell 13y ago
Because doing so would be shooting ourselves in the foot. All of the major players are equally guilty, if not more so, of 'abusing' the patent system. Google and Samsung have tried to control the whole industry through assertion of FRAND patents. Also, you do realize that you are calling for a total monopoly on the entire industry to placed into the hands of Google? I can't think of anything more destructive. Note: I totally agree with you that the patent system is broken, and should be drastically changed to prevent this kind of behavior, but 'punishing' one company is just playing to the PR goals of their competitors.
- spot 13y ago
  Google and Samsung are just fighting back against Apple.
  - gibwell 13y ago
    Surely you don't expect that to be taken seriously. Samsung is not some innocent well-meaning bystander in this. Nor is Google.
  - josephlord 13y ago
    There may be an element of truth to that but Google/Motorola and Samsung are fighting extremely dirty by using FRAND committed standards essential patents. It can easily be seen that a large amount of [inspiration/copying/ripping off - choose your adjective depending on viewpoint] was done of the original iPhone. There are a reasonable range of views as to whether Apple should have had the right to bring any action about that but they were clearly angered and used the available laws to try to prevent it (which due largely to the slow movement of the legal system they have largely failed to do). I can see a range of valid views on the proper protection from copying of products and I don't believe it is possible to prove one better than others (although some might be obviously bad). I don't see anything evil in one mega-corp using the legal system to try to stop another mega-corp from copying it. From Samsung's point of view if getting their current share in smartphones costs them a couple of billion dollars in damages that would be a good deal for them. The patent law is a mess. I would prefer patents MUCH harder to obtain but that could be normally assumed valid once granted and with a legal system able to bring injuctions fast enough to get infringing models removed before they are obselete/replaced.

kunai 13y ago

People don't care about their despotic and toxic environment for the little guys or competitors because they have the best products. That seems to be changing as Android increases in marketshare every day, and Ultrabooks are taking off while Mac marketshare generally has remained stagnant over the past 8 quarters. So, it seems like we already are moving away from Apple. The only thing they can do is now rely on petty lawsuits that damage their reputation in the engineer/tech community, which will hurt them in the long run even more so. The best way to fight it is to fund startups that have a focus on open systems and a proven commitment to free open software. Currently, the the hardware market is controlled by a few very, very large OEMs. Slowly, though, PCB and fab is opening up to many more people besides Samsung, LG, et al. Especially with Kickstarter, I don't see it likely that we will still have a hardware oligopoly in the next 5 years. More boutique manufacturers will spring up, and like it has for desktops, mobile hardware will open up. The next step after that is to reform the broken US patent system so gorillas like Apple and Microsoft can't abuse it.

gibwell 13y ago
Gorillas like Samsung, Google, Apple, and Microsoft, you mean. All of them are guilty. Moving away from Apple simply means intentionally creating a Samsung/Google duopoly, which is insane.

josephlord 13y ago

And where would you go if you were to boycott Apple over the actions you deem to be "abusing the broken US patent system". I think Google/Motorola and Samsung have behaved far worse when they attempted to obtain injuctions and excessive licensing fees over patents that they had committed to license on FRAND terms. Microsoft has a horrible history of anticompetive behavior. Maybe Blackberry phone and linux based computer would be an acceptable route although I'm not sure how long Blackberry will be making competitive products and there is a fairly limited choice of PCs shipping without Windows.

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
That would be BlackBerry whose current value is largely in the patents they hold...
- josephlord 13y ago
  Yeah, but I haven't seen that many accusations of Blackberry "abusing" them. If that does rule them out it makes it really hard to see what a good choice would be if you are boycotting Apple over their patent (ab)use. I guess Firefox OS or something like that if you could find the right manufacturer but your choice is getting really quite slim.
kondor6c 13y ago
As far as phones go, perhaps FirefoxOS when it matures more. Too bad the OpenMoko project never picked up enough speed. If that really doesn't work, then there are several attempts to use a pure ASOP on other phones like the HTC One or something like that.
Prefinem 13y ago
You may think that Google and Samsung are worse because of FRAND, but the fact is that Apple by its very nature is more dangerous because of their closed system. If Google wins a patent, with it's open source AOSP, then guess what, anyone can use it. If Apple wins a patent, guess what, everyone has to pay for it. This is horrible for users and businesses and is evil in nature. As for Samsung, they are fighting back against Apple for the most part, and do so however they can.
- gibwell 13y ago
  Sadly not true. Google is moving most new Android development into tightly controlled closed source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-... And portraying Samsung as the victim is absurd, they are one of the worlds most aggressive companies.

shmerl 13y ago

> I also wonder at what point we as a community are going to start voting with our wallets against Apple and the extent to which they are abusing the broken US patent system. Good question. I never used any Apple products and never will. While they definitely made others try to compete with them, at the same time they held back many important technologies. For example audio and video codecs. Why don't we see open codecs gaining wider adoption in hardware and on the Web? Apple is the culprit. Try to find a hardware player which supports Vorbis (and also has characteristics that you need), or try to explain to an Apple user while your OGG/Vorbis audio or WebM video doesn't play in their iPod or Safari. It's quite irritating when some control the technology because of their greed and hold back the innovation which they claim to embrace.

josephlord 13y ago
Vorbis doesn't have hardware support on many chipsets which means that battery life would not be as good as for MP3/AAC. I find it quite hard to see Apple as evil for implementing International Standards and while they are not free (or Free software compatible) they are open. There are plenty of good reasons for not adding support to additional codecs without good reason to. 1) Different (and confusing) compatibility depending on the exact model of your product. 2) Need to keep support indefinitely otherwise you cut off previously supported content in people's libraries. People get far more annoyed when you take something away that if you never enabled it. 3) If you have Apple's scale and people will encode to your format anyway a narrow minimal range of formats supported will reduce debugging and handling of edge cases and file types. Free codecs are a niche concern, almost all users get them [edit: by "them" I meant AAC/AVC/MPEG4] free from their OS provider and in the trickier cases like Linux there are plenty of sources for open source codecs that you can obtain as packages for nearly every distro. AFAIK there has never been any legal action to try to prevent these packages being distributed. So in practice using Free codecs is an ideological decision in most cases and very few people care (I used to but I got over it, the AVC and AAC licenses really aren't that bad if you read them).
- shmerl 13y ago
  Adding Vorbis in hardware is not hard. The reason it's not usually added is because of Apple precisely, since they are one of the major manufacturers of hardware players. I.e. if they'd add support for Vorbis, it will become widespread pretty soon. So your argument is reversed. And, in mobile SoCs it is gaining traction now, because of Google and WebM. Hardware players are a bigger problem. 1) There is nothing confusing about codecs support. Just specify what's supported. Sansa players list supported codecs which include Vorbis and FLAC for example. 2) So what? Keep it as much as you want. What's the problem with that? 3) Barring newer and better codecs from adoption because of "debugging burden" is just ridiculous. > Free codecs are a niche concern, almost all users get them free from their OS provider So, how do OS X or iOS users get it from Apple? They don't. And that's the reason why HTML5 audio and video is such a mess. Apple know perfectly that they cause it, and they don't care, because they are jerks.

gibwell 13y ago

Because doing so would be shooting ourselves in the foot. All of the major players are equally guilty, if not more so, of 'abusing' the patent system. Google and Samsung have tried to control the whole industry through assertion of FRAND patents. Also, you do realize that you are calling for a total monopoly on the entire industry to placed into the hands of Google? I can't think of anything more destructive. Note: I totally agree with you that the patent system is broken, and should be drastically changed to prevent this kind of behavior, but 'punishing' one company is just playing to the PR goals of their competitors.

spot 13y ago
Google and Samsung are just fighting back against Apple.
- gibwell 13y ago
  Surely you don't expect that to be taken seriously. Samsung is not some innocent well-meaning bystander in this. Nor is Google.
- josephlord 13y ago
  There may be an element of truth to that but Google/Motorola and Samsung are fighting extremely dirty by using FRAND committed standards essential patents. It can easily be seen that a large amount of [inspiration/copying/ripping off - choose your adjective depending on viewpoint] was done of the original iPhone. There are a reasonable range of views as to whether Apple should have had the right to bring any action about that but they were clearly angered and used the available laws to try to prevent it (which due largely to the slow movement of the legal system they have largely failed to do). I can see a range of valid views on the proper protection from copying of products and I don't believe it is possible to prove one better than others (although some might be obviously bad). I don't see anything evil in one mega-corp using the legal system to try to stop another mega-corp from copying it. From Samsung's point of view if getting their current share in smartphones costs them a couple of billion dollars in damages that would be a good deal for them. The patent law is a mess. I would prefer patents MUCH harder to obtain but that could be normally assumed valid once granted and with a legal system able to bring injuctions fast enough to get infringing models removed before they are obselete/replaced.