Where were you when Apple declared war?

ComputerWorld ^ | July 12, 2011 | Jonny Evans

[Swordmaker]

"Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions." Sun Tzu, Art of War

It was January 2007 when Apple [AAPL] went to war. The original iPhone wasn't just the world's first thin client Mac, it was then the company began to define the future of mass market mobile computing. It was when it swore to fight tooth and claw to dominate the vision.

[ABOVE: No more Mr. Nice Guy.]

World iWar

Today, you have Apple involved in an increasingly bitter global dispute with Samsung, litigation against HTC and Motorola, Kodak, the lousy Lodsys lawsuit and more. Apple is also taking on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) over essential patents for apps.

Apple is prepared to litigate to defend its position. That's in addition to its other battlefronts, for example: user interface excellence, world-class design, simplicity and self-expression.

Apple is attempting to retain control over patents which handle how mobile applications request sensitive information, such as contact, diary or other personal data. In order to do this it has had to refuse to provide a royalty-free license for two patents which are core components to the W3C's Widget Access Request Policy, a specification closely tied to HTML5.

Cupertino's refusal to allow royalty-free licenses to its '007 and '77 patents has driven the W3C to seek out 'prior art' with which to invalidate Apple's patents. Or find another way in the event a case to invalidate cannot be found.

[tacticalogic]

In case you haven't noticed, Apple is dominating by having the best product in its market. Nobody sells more high-end cell phones, nobody sells more tablets, nobody sells more high-end consumer computers.

Rolls Royce makes arguably the best product in their market. How many they sell doesn't have anything to do with the quality of what they make, or how many lawyers they employ or how many patents they control.

I guess inside the "ecosystem", "quality" is whatever Apple is doing the best at today.

[Myrddin]

Pure desperation is SCO suing for UNIX revenues. Just a hollow shell, full of lawyers, producing nothing of value.

It really is hard to avoid patronizing companies that support leftist causes. The leftists have infiltrated corporate America.

[antiRepublicrat]

I should have stated that as nobody's making more money than Apple doing these things. Apple is raking in profit hand over fist off of producing highly competitive and profitable products. Therefore, there's no way Apple is suing out of the same desperation than an SCO, Dell or other company on the decline would do.

"quality" is whatever Apple is doing the best at today.

No, Apple tends to actually have the highest quality products. Apple also consistently rates highest for consumer satisfaction and support. So Apple isn't one of these companies making cheap products on a slim margin, suing because they need to pad the balance books or slow down the competition so they can catch up.

[tacticalogic]

And when their orders and stock prices were going up the buzz was all about that. Now that they’ve started to fall off, you never hear about it. It gets pretty transparent after awhile.

[antiRepublicrat]

“Were” going up? Stock fluctuates of course, but have you seen the latest iPad numbers? There is the possibility of an iPhone slow down due to the imminent release of the next generation in a month or so, and because of that sales tend to be cyclic, a dip before release, a boom afterwards.

[tacticalogic]

No, I haven't seen the latest iPad numbers. Somehow I'm just not buying into this whole line of thinking that having caught a bubble in a computerized pocket toys market means Apple is and forever will be the Big Dog in the computer industry, and everyone must pay homage.

[Terpfen]

Somehow I'm just not buying into this whole line of thinking that having caught a bubble in a computerized pocket toys market

Well, it's good that you aren't buying into your own false descriptions.

[tacticalogic]

Well, it's good that you aren't buying into your own false descriptions.

Let me know when somebody dies in the "war".

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I guess inside the "ecosystem", "quality" is whatever Apple is doing the best at today.

The simplest definition of "quality" is whatever the public is willing to pay the most for. Apple doesn't sell $300 laptops, but it makes more money selling laptops than anyone else does - meaning either that they sell devices on the basis of glitz, or that they sell devices which perform well and remain valuable when used. I didn't buy an expensive model of Mac, but years after I bought it, PC users who see it are struck by it.

[cowboyway]

Hopefully when they go down this time they take their sycophant fanboys with them

Including Rush Limbaugh?

[VanDeKoik]

Rush doesn’t spend his time looking for articles trying to trash other platforms.

People that just like it are not the same as fanboys who just flame for kicks and to prop up their self-esteem.

[antiRepublicrat]

meaning either that they sell devices on the basis of glitz

Anybody who tries just glitz without underlying value fails. Remember most PC users trying to pimp-up their PCs with plastic in the face of Apple's design successes? Remember Apple's own Mac Cube? It was very nice and glitzy, but it cost far more than equivalent Mac hardware. Not many people have that much money to shell out for looks.

[ReignOfError]

Remember Apple's own Mac Cube? It was very nice and glitzy, but it cost far more than equivalent Mac hardware.

I look at the G4 Cube as a step on the way to the Mac Mini. For years, a lot of folks were clamoring for a "headless iMac," so they could save some money by using the monitor they already had. The Cube wasn't it. The Mini was.

The Cube, the 20th Anniversary Mac, and (I would argue) the first iteration of the MacBook Air were what Apple-bashers claim all Macs are -- machines that charged a hefty premium for aesthetics. There is a limited market for such machines. On the other hand, machines with smart, functional, and yes, aesthetically appealing design, like the iMac, the MacBook Pro, and the current-generation MacBook Air, iPhone and iPad sell quite well.

[cowboyway]

Rush doesn’t spend his time looking for articles trying to trash other platforms. People that just like it are not the same as fanboys who just flame for kicks and to prop up their self-esteem.

I take it that you work for the Lame Stream Media.....

[VanDeKoik]

Uh....no.

[antiRepublicrat]

Somehow I'm just not buying into this whole line of thinking that having caught a bubble in a computerized pocket toys market means Apple is and forever will be the Big Dog in the computer industry

First, nobody remains the big dog forever. Second, that's one hell of a ten-year bubble. How long does a bubble have to last before it simply becomes the state of things? Apple has had to face fierce competition to every single product by the biggest players in industry for a decade, and is still having success.

[roadcat]

I bought an original IBM PC. It came with complete electronic schematics and complete BIOS source code listing. Small wonder IBM lost all control.

I bought an original Apple II, one of the first ones. Same thing, Apple published the schematics and BIOS code. Soon there were hundreds of cheap clones and Apple lost control. Apple learned their lesson with subsequent inventions (except for handing over the Mac GUI code to Microsoft, which they cloned as Windows).

I remember when the Russians announced their first home-developed personal computer at some world electronics exhibition, touted as totally designed by Russians. Except when westerners took a peek at the BIOS, it was identical to the Apple code right down to the embedded Apple copyright notices.

[tacticalogic]

First, nobody remains the big dog forever. Second, that's one hell of a ten-year bubble.

When did market dominance in pocket toys like iPods become the benchmark of dominance in the computer industry?

[Gaffer]

I must say that I have been very happy with my iPhone and my iPad2. However, I might not have been as happy with both if I had to pay for them out of my pocket - my employer paid.

You've heard of the "blue screen of death" for MS. Well, Apple iDads have the equivalent; the "cracked screen" of "you're-gonna-pay-an-assload" to repair/replace. In both cases, my employer paid for replacement/repair. I'd have given up both if I would have to have paid.

[antiRepublicrat]

The Cube, the 20th Anniversary Mac, and (I would argue) the first iteration of the MacBook Air were what Apple-bashers claim all Macs are -- machines that charged a hefty premium for aesthetics.

Agree, except part of the Air's aesthetics was its extreme portability, an actually useful feature. The problem was then it was far too slow to be even a main road warrior machine. But it was a technological feat just to get it that small in the first place, much less worry about performance.

In fact, the Cube even had some high technology behind the looks. The kind of molding technology to make that case was invented by Apple, and the system was carefully designed to allow chimney cooling without fans. It's not like the standard, stick a fancy plastic faceplate on a box and call it "design."

And, yes, the 20th Anniversary Mac was just for show, a "here's what we can do" vision thing. I was surprised Apple didn't make it a limited edition in the first place.