03.21.10
Are Proprietary Software Users Too Dangerous for Copying and Pasting?
Summary: The primitivism of Apple’s and Microsoft’s tablets or phones (respectively) as shown using some new information
“COPY AND PASTE” is a fundamental function that borrows its name from the analogy/metaphor of a physical action. Whether there is a patent on this digital process is a separate question, but either way, the nature of the action is one that can scare copyright maximalists. As iPad shows (it does not show much [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]), Apple chose to sidle with the copyright cartel, which Steve Jobs has connections with. It’s all about DRM prisons and prevention of sharing — the very nature and cornerstone of the World Wide Web and modern science.
Here is more new information about the iPad. It’s information which indicates that “Apple will not replace Ipad batteries”:
EXPENSIVE TOYMAKER Apple has made it clear that when the battery dies in its overpriced keyboardless netbook, the Ipad, you will have to stump up $99 for a new discounted machine.
Apple has a powerful brand, but the same cannot be said about its products. Apple has run advertisements here in the UK about the ‘feature’ of “copy and paste” being added to the iPhone (after Apple had maliciously killed third-party software that achieved it). It’s comical. They show this on television — the simple process of copying some lump of text, which they gloat about as though it’s a “killer feature”. It’s comical because my Palm devices have been doing this for over a decade and they are PDAs, yet Apple treats it like some sort of “innovation” (the idea is trivial, simple to implement, and it goes back many decades, according to Wikipedia).
In recent weeks Microsoft has been publicly admitting that it takes inspiration from the iPhone. We have cited several reports about this. Now it turns out that Windows Phone 7 (a renamed Windows Mobile 7) will omit “copy and paste”. The British press confirms this too [1, 2].
Ready for another long, drawn-out copy and paste controversy to overtake your every waking moment for a year or two? Good: Microsoft just mentioned in a Q&A session here at MIX10 in no uncertain terms that clipboard operations won’t be supported on Windows Phone 7 Series… so that’s that.
What a disaster. So Microsoft is making its phones even dumber and less capable over time. Users — in turn — will have no way around this.
Last night we quoted Tim Anderson (Microsoft booster) as saying that “Win phone 7 marketplace can automatically revoke apps – delete them from your device!” (he said this off the record — so to speak — over in Twitter). That’s another antifeature that Microsoft copied from Apple.
“Win phone 7 marketplace can automatically revoke apps – delete them from your device!”
–Tim AndersonNow we find that Anderson is repeatedly boosting the product along with a colleague and Microsoft booster, Gavin Clarke (he also boosts IE 9 despite the true problems [1, 2, 3, 4]). What has happened to The Register that made it so full of Microsoft boosters? This news site is still belittling Google and defending Microsoft (we gave examples before and we keep seeing this pattern every day). The Register is hardly worth following anymore (personally, I read it just once a week now). The ‘old’ Register (the one I once knew) is not the ‘new’ Register, even though it has kept the same name (different writers and funding sources).
Anyway, to wrap up some points that we have raised before, Windows Phone 7 is about taking even more control away from users and Tim Bray says the same thing about Apple (we covered his rants last week).
What about Apple’s attack on GNU/Linux? This sure doesn’t make Apple any less aggressive than Microsoft when it comes to the mobile marketplace. Apple’s anti-Android/Linux lawsuit and prior attacks (e.g. patent FUD against Palm) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], which received Microsoft’s support by the way [1, 2, 3], are followed by yet more patent applications from Apple. This new one is about “Mobile Social Networking,” according to IDG News Service.
A recently disclosed patent request suggests Apple may be working on a mobile social networking application that would presumably let iPhone users form ad-hoc groups based on their locations.
That’s a software patent. █
