Apple Rolls Out WebKit2, But No Linux Love Yet

[perpetualrabbit]

I would also like to point out that patents do not stifle innovation. They stifle duplication.

Really? Well for instance touchscreens, including experiments with multitouch have been around for almost as long as the mouse. Any gestures you can make on a (multi-)touch screen as well. Yet Apple has patented multitouch and gestures like pinching, which is completely trivial.

So they are in effect stifling innovation. And in fact they do this by duplicating things that already existed long before. Even if the Apple engineers re-invented some of those things independently, they should never have gotten a patent for it.

Patent only ever were somewhat useful when used by single inventors or small shops long ago. Back when the automobile and the telegraph were invented. Nowadays the stream of new ideas is so much larger, there are so much more engineers, and there is so much big money behind it that patent do not help innovation, but they hinder it.

They should be abolished altogether, if only to get rid of patent trolls (company who only buy patents for litigation but make no products themselves).

[V!NCENT]

Apple... hmzzzz...

A company that designs hardware that the rest of the industry follows. In other words they do not care if something costs more money (it's for the elites anyway) as long as it makes it a more usable product.

Phone companies where still like: It can play MP3's now! And Apple came with touchscreens. Fine... I bought a Samsung phone with a touchscreen and I wouldn't be able to go back (web browsing).

I like the fact that Apple raises the bar for consumer products so that companies feel like that they have to make better products so they can still compete.

What else? They are pushing Unix to the masses. I like that too, because they also use open standards. No problem with that.

Their products focus heavily in minimalistic design, which is what a lot of avarage computer users realy like/need.

Apple is probably the only company that makes user-friendly computers.

Will I ever buy it? No chance in hell:
-Too expensive
-Too restricted
-Less functionality
-Security hell (Apple uses a lot of FLOSS projects code and Mac OS X isn't updated daily on average, which means hackers only need to see what holes are patched in the corresponding FLOSS and exploit it on Mac users, so this is hell when more people start using Apple products)

And Linux pwns the shit out of Apple IMHO.

My $0,04

[Apopas]

Pfff Apple. Maybe the only thing I like in the computer culture of my country is the fact that Linux is considered a bigger player than Apple. Hmmm Apple is not considered a player at all...

[deanjo]

You're absolutely correct, deanjo, Apple is a perfect company in every way and I have no idea what I was thinking when i dared to make a small criticism of it. I apologize, and will never bring this matter up again. /sarcasm

Never said Apple was perfect, far from it but trying to paint a company one company as Judas without looking around and looking at the surroundings and what is going on elsewhere is a view seen through horse blinders.

[smitty3268]

With reguards to adobe, they knew the score well before hand and adobe tried to sneak around and find a loophole.

Adobe is only one example. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of apps developed for the iPhone that were declared persona non-grata. Apps that apple has arbitrarily decided "duplicate functionality" even though users would disagree. Unity3D games that apple initially approved and is only now taking away. The list goes on. The issue is that if you develop an iphone app right now, you basically have to just hope and pray that your investment doesn't go up in smoke. Then hope that even after initial approval, Apple doesn't later take it away. That's not friendly at all.

I find it very difficult to feel any sympathy towards Adobe, they're a real bastard of a company in my book. But Apple has actually managed to do it for me.

Anyway, i'm getting tired of this conversation. So i'll end it, in apparently the only way that will make you happy.

You're absolutely correct, deanjo, Apple is a perfect company in every way and I have no idea what I was thinking when i dared to make a small criticism of it. I apologize, and will never bring this matter up again. /sarcasm

[deanjo]

I might also add that when you grab the SDK for the iPhone you agree to the terms laid out in the EULA which stipulates that Apple has final say and the developer agrees to those terms so they are very up front about that.

[deanjo]

But at least they were up front about it. The difference is that Apple waited until after Adobe spent millions to get their product running on the iPhone, and only then took away the rug right at the last moment. The issue is the capriciousness and the lack of hard rules. The fact that you might be selling something on the iPhone right now, only to suddenly have it taken away because some app reviewer changes their mind. With MS, you always know where you stand.

With reguards to adobe, they knew the score well before hand and adobe tried to sneak around and find a loophole.

[smitty3268]

And how many homebrew apps are running on a Xbox? Same limitations buddy if not more restrictive.

But at least they were up front about it. The difference is that Apple waited until after Adobe spent millions to get their product running on the iPhone, and only then took away the rug right at the last moment. The issue is the capriciousness and the lack of hard rules. The fact that you might be selling something on the iPhone right now, only to suddenly have it taken away because some app reviewer changes their mind. With MS, you always know where you stand.

[deanjo]

Wow. Just..... wow. Do you really believe the stuff you're spewing out right now? You mentioned apple used to pay you, is that actually still the case?

MS may try to keep people from copying their own products (yes, apple does this as well, and much more vigorously). But they have never once - please, try to give me an example here - declared that a company that has spent millions of dollars developing a product that they can't allow their users to run it on top of windows. Not once.

Heck, for my taste MS is even a little too developer friendly - i think the platform would be better if they didn't put such a priority on maintaining binary compatibility with decades old code, but I can see why a 3rd party developer might like it.

And how many homebrew apps are running on a Xbox? Same limitations buddy if not more restrictive.

[smitty3268]

I would also like to point out that patents do not stifle innovation. They stifle duplication.

That depends on the patent, of course. Some are good, some are bad. For example, the gene patents that a US judge recently struck down say that a company owns a human gene, and any invention or treatment anyone ever creates related to that gene in any way. As you can imagine, that results in less innovation because any other company looking at creating a treatment that involves that gene would just lose it anyway. But you're correct that some patents can be good. I'm in favor of fixing the patent system, not scrapping it entirely.