Tag Archives: apple
What the New York Times Should Have Asked
This is what Apple “invented” the idea of sliding a latch to open something. But because they were doing it on a computer they got to patent it. Probably it cost some effort to work out the code to create the image and so forth – although if it cost them millions their programmers are incompetent – even tens of thousands seems high for that particular coding job. But here is the point: Nobody gets to copy their code with or without patents. The thing they actually paid for is protected.
Am I An Outlier, Or Are Apple Products No Longer Easy To Use?
Let me repeat my refrain: This. Ain’t. Easy.
Without going into detail, my little rant about Calendar, iPhoto, Address Book, et al goes for iTunes as well. I even bought a piece of software to try to fix iTunes myriad issues (Rinse). I can’t figure out whether or not Rinse has fixed anything, to be honest, and so far, all it’s managed to do is marry the wrong album art to about 100 or so songs which previously didn’t have any imagery. Which is kind of funny, but a tad annoying. And just the fact that there’s a market for something like Rinse kind of makes my point.
The interesting thing here is that the apps aren’t outliers, they’re pretty core Apple or productivity items. We’re all outliers on some dimension, but there is common ground where you think the effort would be made. Email may be declining, but calendars, hardly. They’ve been a disaster for ever and don’t appear to be improving.
Never been an adherent of the Apple “just works” received wisdom. As a self-denominated outlier thought it might “just work” if you “just did what Apple expected you to do,” but this article is suggesting that even if you just do what might be widely expected you would, it won’t.
Blendr Isn’t Grindr: Why We Still Don’t Have a Straight Hookup App
In other words, the only way to make a straight version of Grindr work is to make it woman-centric. Given the gender gap in the tech-startup world right now, I’m guessing I have a long while to wait for such an app.
via good.is
In an environment that allows “permissionless innovation” it only takes one, so I doubt any wait will be the result of a “gender gap” in the tech-startup world.
U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Posner spikes Apple-Google case, calls patent system ???dysfunctional???
In a series of earlier rulings in the Apple case, Posner didn???t mince words as he used plain language to beat up the over-reaching arguments of both sides:
[re a slide-to-unlock patent] Apple???s .. argument is that ???a tap is a zero-length swipe.??? That???s silly. It???s like saying that a point is a zero-length line.Motorola???s contention that the term has a ???plain and ordinary meaning??? is ridiculous; Motorola seems to have forgotten that this is a jury trial.In his ruling to dismiss, Posner noted that a trial would ???impose costs disproportionate to the harm ??? and would be contrary to the public interest.???
via gigaom.com
Anti-competitive, thank you judge.
Libraries borked by ebook forks
Less than a week ago, Apple delivered a groundbreaking announcement with the release of iBooks Author. A drag-and-drop authoring environment, Author makes it easy to build media-rich, interactive books in a simple-to-use tool. Positioned by its i-name as a sibling to the iWork app family, versus separate high-end design products like GarageBand, Author democratizes the production of complex structured books, notably including textbooks.
But for libraries, at a time when they are increasingly struggling to provide access to ebooks as publishers pull back from lending support, Apple has provided a rib-crunching blow by delivering proprietary output tied to the iPad. And, in Apple???s license terms, any iBook created by Author can be distributed freely, but commercial sales must run through the iBookstore. This has generated a great deal of disappointment from those who wished to see Apple release a general purpose ebook creation tool.
All commercial sales of the output must pay tithe to the Apple channel.
How Apple won the West (and lost the world) ??? The Register
Thom Holwerda is thus largely correct in asserting that “the iPhone’s impact on the world is negligible”, whatever its impact on markets for the rich. This isn’t to disparage what Apple has done, but to put it in context, and to serve as a reminder of just how revolutionary Android promises to be for the world.
Hamish MacEwan 