Posted on 03/16/2015 9:21:55 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine Still - H 2015
The Bottom Line: A convincing, but perhaps unnecessary, primer on Steve Jobs's flaws and misdeeds
Venue: South By Southwest Film Festival, Headliners
Director: Alex Gibney
Breaking: Steve Jobs was no saint.
Alex Gibney begins Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine with a first-person voiceover, marveling at the global outpouring of emotion that greeted the Apple leader's 2011 death. "I was mystified," he recalls, at the tears shed over someone who was not a pop star or beloved author but merely a man who sold us things. As an iPhone user, Gibney understands there's more to it than that. But Machine is his two hour-plus corrective to uncritical idolatry of the tech legend, a film that roots around in his misdeeds and mean traits, not in search of a complete portrait, but in the spirit of a Judgment Day prosecutor who knows damn well the defendant was not a holy man.
Those who pay attention to the tech world (or just to Apple specifically) will know much of what they encounter here, and disinterested lay folk will be puzzled by the mostly negative focus on someone they've heard is our generation's genius. As for those people who put candles outside of Apple stores, one assumes they'll dismiss it as sour grapes or worse.
The doc merits seeing it on its terms and should generate plenty of buzz in this Apple-obsessed world, but word-of-mouth may not be kind. Gibney moves chronologically through Jobs' life, more or less, making note of some high points but usually digging in only when he has a negative anecdote to tell — as when, according to Steve Wozniak's account, Jobs swindled him out of 90% of his share of payment for work they did on Atari's Breakout game. (This, we're told, is the "original sin" committed even before that famous apple came around.) An exception to this slant is the long stretch in which the film investigates Jobs' brilliance at selling the concept of the "personal computer" — his insight that people could fall in love if they thought a computer was not a tool for them, but would actually be part of them.
The film will return to this idea occasionally, especially once the iPhone rolls around, but it can't devote enough time to the intertwining of personal identity and consumer electronics to say anything new on the subject. And even an audience that goes out of its way to see Gibney's film seems disinclined to grasp this kind of criticism: Within 90 seconds of the director's funny observation that his hand gravitates to the phone in his pocket like Frodo's toward the ring, the woman in front of me mechanically pulled hers out to check email.
There are many directions one could have gone in a film examining the societal impact of the gizmos and related philosophies Jobs shepherded into the world — one could, for instance, highlight the paternalism of a company that doesn't trust its customers to use whatever software they like on the devices they've bought. But despite his quick nods to these issues, for Gibney it's personal.
We hear how Jobs threw a tantrum when his high school girlfriend got pregnant; we're told that around the time Apple's IPO made him worth $200 million, Jobs lied in order to deny his paternity and was angry about paying $500 a month in child support. We hear how he alternately cajoled and bullied the tech reporters who were given a misplaced prototype of the iPhone 4, then pushed law enforcement to retaliate by breaking into a reporter's house and taking crates of possessions. We're walked through illegal and/or unseemly maneuvering to do with backdated stock options and profits hidden from the taxman.
Gibney is convincing on every front. And while Apple (big surprise) refused to cooperate — meaning that key players like Jony Ive and Tim Cook are all but invisible in this story — he gets enough of Jobs' collaborators on camera to lend emotional color to the portrait. Friend and early employee Daniel Kottke speaks to his spiritual pursuits; engineer Bob Belleville explains how he used workplace chaos as a tool (and tears up while addressing his mixed emotions about the man); iPhone team member Andy Grignon recounts the Godfather-ish "half-hour mindf—" he received when he said he was leaving the company. No episode in The Man in the Machine is the kind of minor indiscretion that shouldn't be included in a historical figure's biography. The film isn't petty or mean. But after making his name by digging into world-rattling catastrophes like Enron and sex abuse in the Catholic church, after daring to joust with Scientology's lawyers, what about this project demanded Gibney's attention?
Nothing he can say at this late date can make MP3.com not have been selling individual songs to me and hundreds of thousands of other customers in the late 90s. It can’t retroactively cause ITunes to have existed in the late 90s either. Ergot, Apple wasn’t an early individual song file marketer.
So a different guy disseminating verifiably fraudulent information hardly helps your case in any way.
It doesn’t matter how much of a fanboi you are or how much hero worship you have.
I read that book, good read. You left out a few inventions of Jobs. Most notably, inventing the Apple Store retail experience. At the time, pundits said they would fail. Hugely successful. Microsoft copied Apple, with the Microsoft Store (same look and feel); but left out the part about filling the store with something folks want. Apple makes more money per square foot in their stores than anyone else (changing the world forever).
Jobs was a fascinating man. I read John Sculley’s book and remember the Guy Amelio days. My first “Mac” was a PowerComputing clone.
I don’t know how Jobs could get away with treating folks the way he did—even being the kind of genius he was, though I bet that explains a lot of it.
And again you are completely wrong. Do you know what the suicide rate was among all of FoxConn's 750,000 young workers at the heighth of the suicide spate in 2010? I'm betting you do not. If you did, you wouldn't be posting this tripe. It was 1.5 per 100,000! I doubt you would find ANY group of 750,000 people anywhere in the world with that low of a suicide rate!
The suicide rate among rural youth in the USA is 20 per 100,000, and almost 11 per 100,000 in the cities. The suicide rate for young people in the USA is seven to fifteen times higher than the suicide rate of similar age young people at FoxConn. . . and you have YOUR panties in a twist about one of the lowest suicide rates in the world?!
The suicide rate among students at Ivy League Universtites such as Yale and Harvard in the USA is more than twice as high as the workers at Foxconn. . . you have fallen for a FUD campaign against Apple. . . when the fewer than eighteen employees among FoxConn's vast employee numbers killed themselves in their off-hours, not while working, over an eighteen month period. Yes, you read that right, an average of one per month out of 750,000 employees! Do you know how many suicides there have been among FoxConn's now 850,000 workers since the events in 2010? Five. In five years!
Does that make any rational sense at all? It doesn't, does it? That's because it was spoon fed to you as propaganda, anti-Apple propaganda we call FUD!
By-the-way, the plant where the majority of the workers who did kill themselves were employed made not one Apple product. None. The were working on NOKIA phones, SONY PlayStations, HP Computers, and MICROSOFT X-Boxes, but not one Apple iPhone, iPad, iPod, or Mac. Sorry. In fact, FoxConn's customer list looks like a who's who of the consumer electronics of the world.
As of January 2012, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.'s subsidiary FoxConn Technology Group assembles approximately 40% of the consumer electronics in the world according to numerous sources including Wikipedia and the New York Times. Here is a partial list of the top 52 (out of over 500) FoxConn's customers I've been able to compile from news articles where their contractural relationships were mentioned over the past five years, which include the period when the suicides occurred:
As for work hours and conditions? How about reading a contemporaneous report from someone who was working across the street from the FoxConn Shenzhen factory where Apple products were assembled and spoke to the workers?
Foxconn: The Fire That Wasn't
BY Brad Hall| 03/15/12 - 09:41 AM EDTNEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Over the past month, media reports have made Foxconn (FXCNY.PK:OTC) the icon of Chinese labor suffering. Headlines from The Telegraph (March 7) read "iPhone Workers Beg Apple for Better Working Conditions." Daily Tech wrote, "Employees at Apple's Hellish Foxconn Factory Feel Life is 'Meaningless'." Sounds like a scary place.
My office building shares a property line with Foxconn's largest plant in Shenzhen. Every night I see Foxconn employees at restaurants. They seem happy, but after reading many articles, I've come to view them with pity. Yet, friends who work as consultants to Foxconn tell me that working conditions are quite good.
There are thousands of factories in the Pearl River Valley and a there is free flow of employees between the factories. I wondered how could a company be so abusive and yet so successful? It seemed to defy logic.
I began to wonder, "What does Foxconn look like through the eyes of its employees?"
Foxconn is a Taiwanese-owned company that produces about 40% of the world's consumer electronic products and is Apple's (AAPL_) largest supplier. Its largest factory in Shenzhen employs approximately 300,000 young adults. It's beyond huge. As a personal disclosure, I am neither related to, nor friends with any FoxConn employee and I do not own Foxconn stock. I do own AAPL.
Most FoxConn employees come from the countryside where their hardworking families have farmed the same land for many generations. They dutifully send home part of their paycheck each month.
From 1988 until 2009, four Foxconn employees attempted suicide on-site (0.18 per year). In 2010, that number increased almost one hundred times to eighteen. In 2011, it fell again to four. What happened in 2010?
In 2010, embarrassed by bad publicity, the company offered condolence pay packages equivalent to 10 years' salary to families of the deceased. This was widely reported in China and company officials say the incentive served as a call for depressed individuals to join Foxconn and leave life with honor. Foxconn CEO, Terry Gou read this letter to shareholders: "...now I'm going to jump off Foxconn, really leaving now, but you don't have to be sad, because Foxconn will pay a bit of money, this is all your son can repay you now."
In the second half of 2010, Foxconn publically stopped the condolence payments. In 2011, the suicide rate dropped by almost 80%. It is important to note that even at its peak, Foxconn's suicide rate was 1.5 per 100,000 vs. 3.1 per 100,000 in China -- half the suicide rate of society at large.
Maybe the suicides were not about labor conditions.
Last week, my colleague Jiangying, a 23-year-old Chinese woman, and I randomly interviewed 22 Foxconn employees to see their world through their eyes. We assiduously adhered to behavioral science protocols for unbiased questioning, but you can judge for yourself. Here are our questions and here's what we heard.
"Tell us about your day at work. What do you like and not like about your job?"
Most told us that their job was "OK." No one brought up the topic that work was too demanding. So we asked about their work demands. Almost all said they were reasonable. Surprisingly, one third said their workload was "light or "easy," but none of these worked on the production line. We asked them if their friends were satisfied with their jobs. All but two either said "yes" or "I don't know."
We asked if their work area was clean and safe. All said that it was.
Because we did not hear unsolicited complaints about their work, we asked a leading question, "Do your friends often complain about their work?" A strong majority said that they know people who complain about their work. However, the nature and intensity of the complaints did not seem unusual from what one might expect in any work place.
"Tell us about your pay."
Only a few brought up pay without this question. One said, "The pay is too low." We asked, "Is the pay lower than other factories?" She said, "The pay is the same, but other factories give more overtime. I am losing 1,000 RMB per month!" She went on to tell us that she stays because there is so much career opportunity at Foxconn when compared to a typical Shenzhen factory.
In our first day of interviews, we asked about the infamous 12-hour (7 a.m. to 7 p.m.) days, but no one knew about these work hours. We returned on the second day determined to find the answer. We asked equipment supply people who serve many production lines. They insisted that no one works 12-hour days. We even stopped a female janitor. She didn't know either.
Ironically, the biggest dissatisfaction by far, was lack of overtime. Most of those we interviewed work the 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. shift with a 90-minute lunch break. With one exception, all said they wanted more overtime -- especially Saturday work. Saturday pays double time. Saturday work is competitive and, at best, employees are limited to one Saturday per month. Additionally, some told us that the maximum allowable overtime for their group is 16 hours per month while others said that their maximum is 36 overtime hours per month.
"What do you do after work and on the weekends?"
The vast majority of Foxconn employees are between 18 and 25 years old. Three hundred thousand, mostly single, young adults who did not go to college and leave work at 5:30 p.m. Their interests are the same as any young adult. They play pool, soccer, surf the internet, eat with friends and date. But, like new college students, most were homesick and said they want to go home.
"Tell us about your manager."
Only two said they did not like their manager. A small group had no opinion, but the majority smiled and when we asked this question. They said they liked their manager.
After all the interviews, we wondered, "Where's the fire?"
Last month ABC News aired an "exclusive inside look" of Foxconn. It was 15 minutes of sensational build-up about sweatshops - smoke, with no fire at all.
The ABC crew was given permission by Apple to talk to anyone about anything. Their gotcha moment was a chat with one young lady edited down to one leading question, "If there was one thing you could change, what would it be?" The young lady said the dorms are too crowded and the trees block the sunlight. That's their best shot?
Last week, the Fair Labor Association began a formal Apple-sponsored investigation of Foxconn. After his first visit to Foxconn, the gray pony-tailed president of the FLA, Auret van Heerden said, "The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm." Being "way, way" above average is not what one might expect from the "hellish Foxconn factory."
In today's highly connected, blog-filled world, what is the probability that, in a random sample of 22 Internet-savvy employees, no one has either personally experienced or heard of the oft repeated stories of abuse?
These are two fundamentally different representations of reality. Maybe the fault lies with media members who want to believe in Chinese labor abuse, maybe it's that sensationalism sells or maybe it's simply lazy writers forming opinions from others' opinions. The root cause is unclear.
But one thing is certain -- the media is not telling you the truth.
At the time of publication, the author was long AAPL, although positions may change at any time.
Hall is managing director of Human Capital Systems
(www.humancapitalsystems.com), a firm that designs systems for improving workforce performance. He is also an instructor in Duke Corporate Education's teaching network and author of The New Human Capital Strategy. Hall was formerly a senior vice president at ABN AMRO Bank in Amsterdam and IBM Asia-Pacific's executive in charge of executive leadership and organization effectiveness. During his tenure, IBM was twice ranked No. 1 in the world in Hewitt/Chief Executive magazine's "Top Company for Leaders." Hall completed his Ph.D in industrial-organizational psychology at Tulane University, with a dissertation on people management practices of Japanese corporations.
Now about your Bill Gates adulation:
Gates and his wife donate millions to people in need and other foundations and yet Jobs is wonderful and Gates is the anti-Christ.
Gates gives money to Liberal causes such as Common Core, Forced Sterilization projects, Abortions, Anthropogenic Global Climate Change/Warming, and gun control. Oh yeah, he's a philanthropists all right, or left rather.
Oh, and did you notice that Microsoft ALSO uses the same FoxConn to manufacture its hardware? In fact, it was at MICROSOFT assembly line where some of the workers who killed themselves were earning 1/3 of what Apple required the workers on their products assembly lines be paid by contract, and had on-site monitors employed by Apple to assure contract compliance throughout Apple's supplier chain. Where were Microsoft's compliance employees? They were in Redmond, reading reports.
It boggles my mind you anti-Apple haters swallow the FUD without checking the facts. . . and you do it every single time because you so want to believe everything evil you hear and read about Apple that you willing suspend your distrust of the mainstream media.
“True, that later on Gates invested millions in Apple stock that helped Apple get over a near bankruptcy (caused before Jobs came back to Apple and rescued the company). But Gates himself admitted that the tremendous profits made on the stock was a fantastic deal for him - because of Apple’s tremendous growth. Just keeping it real.”
If what I said is true then why the long-winded speech? ;-)
You are delusional. The indies you were talking about was not the music the real public wanted. That was what Apple and Steve Jobs was able to accomplish by inventing a way to convince the big music publishers who HAD THE MUSIC THE PUBLIC WANTED, not the fringe music who could not get published on the major labels, to be willing to put their catalogs on line. THAT was a major sea change in music. You are being disingenuous by claiming anything else. . . and deliberately distorting history.
You claim minor players without major engineering abilities made the major strides but you are wrong. Just because they may have had a product out first, does not mean they "developed" it. Developing it means making it WORK. . . making it into a product that works for people. Not a product that if you do these steps exactly right it will work for geeks, but a product that works with the general public that they want to buy and use. Show us where Apple has ever claimed to have invented the smartphone? The MP3 player. You will not find Apple claiming that. Only Apple haters claim they say that.
Apple redefines the market and refines the products until they are making the best in the categories. . . and people want to use them because they are easy to use and provide value and work.
“It boggles my mind you anti-Apple haters”
anti-Apple haters? Um, wouldn’t that mean that I love apple?
However, I know what you meant but what makes you think that I hate Apple?
As another poster said that, “Apple And Microsoft were intertwined for years,” and I am aware of that. I simply do not understand why one is a hero and the other is the anti-Christ. They both have/had their faults. They both are human. They both are/were very smart businessmen. I simply do not understand the polarization. ;-)
Hundreds of thousands of users belie your personal fantasy.
The RIAA was not in any way living on the same Peter Pan cloud where you personally live, and that is why they squandered millions and got themselves in Dutch with the courts trying to shut MP3.com down. They were corrupt but not stupid. They knew there was no way in hell they could afford to pay for the rights to the music of every talented act out there...and they were right.
Their inability to shut down independent music through judicial fiat directly lead to the current state of affairs. Young people now listen to a vast tableau of acts and decent writers and musicians now retain the distribution rights to their music.
Delusional? No. It is not myself, MP3.com’s vast customer base 20 years ago, and the RIAA who are delusional about what customers wanted. That played out and it shattered the power the record companies had.
If there were any merit of any sort in your pathetic little I’ll thought out screed the record companies would still be dictating terms.
But they aren’t, now are they?
Next time, (before you post on this topic) have someone competent go over what you wish to say and correct it for you.
Roadcat, that has been disproved so many times, I am getting tired of typing the proofs of its falsity. Microsoft never invested in Apple to bail them out or to help them "get over a near bankruptcy." At the time of the purchase of the $150 Million in Preferred Stock, Apple had just completed the third profitable quarter after having just one quarter of loss, during which they had posted $64 million in mostly paper losses. Apple had over $2 Billion in liquid assets in the form of cash in the bank and short term debentures. They had just purchased NeXT for $450 million, hardly the move of a company teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. . . and certainly not one that would be approved by the FEC if the acquiring company were near bankruptcy.
A company who is "bailing out" another company ALWAYS attaches strings to the bailout funding, among which are controls on what is done with the money, including acquisition of VOTING STOCK, not NON-VOTING preferred stock. The other control they would most likely use is insisting on taking one or two seats, if not more, on the Board of Directors of the company being helped. Microsoft did not do this, nor was it offered. So that takes us back to the peculiarities of Microsoft's Preferred stock: this Apple Preferred Stock was "special" in that it was, authorized by Apple's Board of Directors for this transaction only as " Apple Computer Restricted-Convertible Preferred Stock." In this case, Apple issued Preferred Stock which was NON-VOTING to Microsoft that could be eventually converted to common stock in a ONE for ONE conversion, but the Preferred Stock was "restricted" from being converted for a minimum of five years until after the other agreements had run their course. It was also restricted because the Preferred stock could not be sold until it was converted to common stock, at which time it could be sold. Microsoft sold it all as soon as they could.
Too bad. Had Microsoft not sold it, it would have been worth around $46 BILLION today! A 30,667% return on their "investment in Apple."
No, Roadcat, what actually went down here was Microsoft making a downpayment on what would eventually total almost $2 Billion in royalty payments and licensing for the settlement of a patent and copyright fight that Apple essentially won that was concluded with an out of court settlement that Steve Jobs brokered with Microsoft. The three agreements that settled the lawsuits and pending lawsuit were unsealed several years ago and are available for those who diligently hunt them down. . . and are interesting reading. The three contracts all required Microsoft and Apple to do certain things beginning with the payment of the $150 million and ending with the dismissing of the lawsuits and the issuance of the $150 million in Preferred Stock. . . and Apple comes out smelling like a rose, and Microsoft comes out with the short end.
Microsoft pays $150 Million in cash money to Apple, licenses the software at issue in the suits from Apple for five years and other IP from Apple for other lucrative license costs for five years, continues development and publishing of MS Office for Mac, and licenses TO Apple all of Microsoft's iP in perpetuity gratis, in exchange, Apple agrees to bundle MS Internet Explorer browser along with Netscape Navigator with all new Macs, license the software in suit to Microsoft, not say nasty things about Microsoft, accept all that nasty old money from Microsoft in the form of a purchase of Preferred Stock, Dismiss those pesky lawsuits with prejudice, and print up a real pretty piece of engraved paper saying we accept $150 million from Microsoft (cost about $5 to do on Really Nice Paper) and deliver it to Microsoft. . . Oh, and keep quiet about all the rest of the money Apple will be getting for the licenses for the use of certain patents for Quicktime used in Windows Movie Player. SHHHHHH hush. Sign, Seal, File with the courts for ten years not to be released.
Forensic Accountants have found the almost $2 Billion transferred between Microsoft and Apple in the five years post "Preferred Stock Purchase" as the rest of the licensing was played out. Apple used it for Research and Development in the iPod, iMac and seed money for the iPhone development.
My first "Mac" was an Amiga 3000 with Mac ROMS in software running Mac software faster than a 68030 Mac could run the same software, due to the Amiga's co-processors handling all the housekeeping and graphics duties that on the Mac had to be handled by the main 68030. I had lots of arguments with Mac Fanboys back then about what their Macs could and could not do. . . and hidden files they thought their Macs did not have, that I could easily see on my Amiga that their Macs kept hidden from them. LOL! That was one of the ways I learned everything there was to learn about Apple MacOS. . . using one with another OS, Amiga OS, giving me complete access under the hood.
Because not one thing you, or roadcat, said was actually true. . . try reading my even longer explanation of what ACTUALLY went down, Spel.
““True, that later on Gates invested millions in Apple stock that helped Apple get over a near bankruptcy”
Just, WOW! You agree with me then chop me to pieces? OK! LOL
I had a very good friend who developed a product used by almost everyone who had a MS-DOS PC. . . Microsoft STOLE his code and his product and incorporated it into the next release of MS-DOS. . . When he sued MS, Microsoft then bankrupted his business by counter suing him for INFRINGING his own product when they CLAIMED THEY INVENTED IT and that HE had stolen it from them! He could prove in court that it was his code, because Microsoft's product had HIS CODE IN IT, including his mother's maiden name and his social security number! However, he did not have the resources to fight a company with BILLIONS to fight him. He could not get to court to prove it. They kept his attorneys answering piles of demands for paper and more paper and more paper. They ran him into bankruptcy with delays and more delays. . . and then Microsoft bought his company and his IP from the bankruptcy court!
The irony is that he wound up working for Microsoft years later. Bitter, and hating the company, but working inside the beast.
On the other hand, Apple has always attempted to buy or pay the proper licensing for anything they use. And no, Apple did not steal the GUI and mouse from Xerox. . . contrary to the Apple Haters who claim differently. Apple entered into a contract with Xerox Management in which $1,000,000 of Pre-IPO Apple Common Stock changed hands in exchange for the two 8 hour visits to the Palo Alto Research Center and for the rights to use what Steve Jobs and the Apple engineers he took with him learned while there. In the long run, Xerox made over $16,000,000 for those 16 hours of visit, and if Xerox had been smart enough to have held onto that stock until today, that one million in pre-IPO stock would be worth over $4,500,000,000! They weren't smart enough.
You will find some lawsuits against Apple for Patent infringement out there, but they are usually what are called "submarine patents," from patents in which Apple is held to infringe an invention in which they are infringing something secondarily described in the claims of a totally unrelated patent. These are almost impossible to find in any patent search.
OR Apple is being sued for an overly broad patent that only someone totally idiotic can claim they are infringing the invention. For example a fellow once got a patent for saying that someone could use telephone and send pictures to another telephone. . . and he is suing Apple because he claims he invented the iPhone! Another inventor got a patent granted in 2011 (this boggles the mind) for sending messages from one phone to another. . . and now claims HE invented MMS phone messaging and is . . . wait for it. . . suing Apple naming the iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Mac computers as infringing products. Another guy is claiming that he invented showing data in the form of a file index like a rolodex on a screen. . . granted in around 2007. . . and is suing Apple for its TimeMachine screens. He's ignoring Apple's own use of HyperCard way back on the first Macs back in 1985 which used the metaphor of a . . . Rolodex!
Another Patent troll is suing Apple because they have a patent from PAGERS about notifying the user when a page comes in by buzzing and lighting up. They are suing Apple because of Apple making a noise or displaying a notice on the lock screen when a message comes in! They claim it's the same as a pager buzzing to notify a user that there's number to be looked at on the pager! I read one lawsuit against Apple a couple of months ago in which the Patent the suer claims Apple is infringing uses Apple's own invention as a predecessor invention inspiring his invention. . . which he is NOW suing them for using! Apple attracts lawsuits because of its deep pockets. . . not because they steal intellectual property.
Microsoft made an industry of stealing intellectual property. They were known for it. . . and unashamed of doing it. If someone fought hard enough, they'd buy you out. . . and hire you and your employees, for a while. . . and after a while you'd be gone. Bill Gates stole from Apple. . . multiple times.
That was what that $150 Million downpayment along with a host of other payments hidden in the three interlocking agreements finally settled, supposedly amicably, that Steve Jobs negotiated in 1997. It was supposed to put all those thefts of Apple's Intellectual property by Microsoft behind them. . . and when Bill Gates appeared in video at the MacWorld conference when Steve Jobs was brought back it shocked the Apple world beyond belief. It was like Nixon opening China. . . but with more hatred!
Swordmaker, you should calm down. This is simply an internet forum for an exchange of ideas and opinions. Aren’t you going a bit overboard? ;-)
As far as I am concerned both Apple/Jobs and Microsoft/Gates should share the credit/responsibility of being both good/evil.
You seem to blame Microsoft for lawsuits against them but forgive Apple for the lawsuits against them. Isn’t that favoritism on your part?
I have worked on both PCs and Apples so that I have no dog in this hunt. I have never, nor do I see now, any great difference between the two operating systems except in the GUI, which you have mentioned. Who stole what is still unknown. Did Jobs steal from Gates? Probably. Did Gates steal from Jobs? Probably. ;-) Initially, Gates, was, after all, contracted to Apple by Jobs to write Jobs’ software for him, right? Are you saying then that Gates has no right to the software?
Do you work for Apple or are somehow connected by way of contract? LOL
Oh, you are trying desperately to be dismissive of someone who is intimately familiar with the history of these events so you can look oh, so erudite with your twaddle. It doesn't work. "Peter Pan cloud. . . funny. The indies back then were not driving much of anything. That's a pipe dream. People back then wanted the big names. . . not some unknown guy recording his music in a garage with cheap equipment. . . on poor quality production standards.
You are TRULY delusional. Markets change over years. . . and the music market changed over years as well. You introduce a big player into a closed market and things change fast. The big publishers of music learned they had to change as well and found that Apple had a LOT of clout.
DID YOU READ STEVE JOBS' OPEN LETTER TO THE PUBLISHERS ABOUT REMOVING DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT????
That is history. . . the CEO of the biggest music store in the world challenged them to change what they were doing.
The fact is that the music Record companies no longer had the power they once had. . . That power had moved from them to Apple and Amazon. And Apple and Amazon did not want Digital Rights Management, which is what the Record Companies DEMANDED as the key to open their catalogs.
Steve's letter pissed them off. . . so they let Amazon have DRM free music first. . . but the breech in the dike was made. . . and the waters of DRM free music was tearing a big hole in their dam. Several months later DRM free music made its appearance on iTunes and the DAMN DRM DAM burst.
As for your claim of MP3.com's "vast" customer base, there was no such thing. It was a piddly little group of people who bought and a larger group of pirates who STOLE their music and traded stolen music on Napster, an illegal way to trade music in which the artists were not compensated for their works, or their rightful copyrights. Were there "thousands"? YUP? There were. Were there "millions"? Probably not. Even "hundreds of thousands of users" is a drop in a proverbial bucket. That is a market of aficionados at best. It is not large enough to drive much of any market forces. Your idiotic straw man about whether the control of the market being still in the hands of the big record companies or not is just that: idiotic. It shows you have no knowledge of economics, market forces, or how they play out. Nor do you have a grasp of history. You see your little area of interest as though it were the be-all-and-end-all, delusion-ally controlling a market so far beyond it in size the tale wagging the dog is gigantic beside it. . . it's more as if a flea were to have scratched the dog off of it's ear!
If any company empowered the Independent musicians and music producers, and independent music producers it has been Apple. Apple opened up iTunes to the Indies, Apple created the tools for independent musicians to create music with Garageband, LogicPro, and any others.
Next time you post something on an Apple thread, have someone who knows what they are talking about go over it and post something intelligent.
Uh, where did I agree with you? I don't see it in post 31. . . and I don't see it in any post where I agree that Microsoft "bailed" Apple out. Nor do I see that it was through the goodness of Microsoft as was implied in your initial statement.
My point was that Apple got back from Microsoft what Microsoft had essentially STOLEN from them. . . their intellectual property rights. . . used by a company to compete against them with Apple's own inventions. Money Apple by rights had earned. NOT money handed to them as charity to help them survive. There is a difference.
;-) You still need to calm down. Maybe have a warm glass of milk but DO NOT drink any COFFEE! ;-)
No, I do not work for Apple. I am interested in the truth, not the continued promulgation of these false "factoids" that have been running around the Internet for years and have gotten life of their own. . . and get repeated and repeated and repeated. I maintain the Apple Ping list for over 700 of our Fellow Freepers who have asked me to do so. . . and they also expect me to correct the false claims with the truth.
I DO think that Microsoft is more evil than Apple. I've experienced it. . . through my friend. I've put up with their less than even good products for years (and made a lot of money because of their less than good products), and seen from the inside of the industry who-stole-from-who, and it usually is not Apple stealing from Microsoft.
Yes, Apple contracted with Bill Gates and Microsoft for specified software and the contract specified that Apple would own the software when the job was done. Bill Gates ignored that portion of the contract. . . and also used his access to portions of Apple's code to add to his other projects. . . and then released projects that were supposed to belong to Apple, as Microsoft products. Apple gave Microsoft access to the Mac to write software for it. Microsoft lifted the GUI.
Apple's CEO at the time executed an agreement with Microsoft when that happened and retroactively gave Bill Gates' company an OK to use certain elements of the GUI specifically for Windows 1.0. When Apple found that Microsoft continued using Apple's GUI elements in Windows 2. 0 and Windows 3, Apple sued for copyright infringement.
The judge in the case, before it reached the jury, decided that informal agreement extended for ALL elements of Apple's GUI for any Windows development that Microsoft might make, ignoring the limitations to Windows 1.0 and the time limitations specifically written in the agreement. He only found that of the 193 copyrighted items in Apple's GUI that had not been ceded to Microsoft by that agreement was the Trashcan name. . . which subsequently became the Recycle bin.
There are many who think someone, or a company who shall go nameless, got to the Judge in light of such a strange decision when the agreement was so specifically limited.
Sorry to disappoint you, Spel. I am perfectly calm. Just very well informed on the facts. . . and I don't abide falsehoods. Sorry. Post false things as facts, and I will show you the truth. . . with links backing my facts. I have been putting up with this for too many years.
By the way, I don't chop you to pieces, I chop the story, the myth, to pieces. You are coming out pretty unscathed. ;^)
You haven't attacked anyone. . . not like another poster on here.
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