Apple Cult engages in battle

Credit: www.kremlin.ru

Summary: Apple tries to reign the industry by intimidation and retaliation tactics which are intended to scare anyone who behaves 'out of line', for instance by competing or gaining intelligence on Apple

"Apple Employees Accompany Police In Search For Missing Prototype," noted Kari Laine on Thursday, the 8^th of September. He linked to an article from Murdoch's press (WSJ).

Quoting another version of the story (from Ars Technica): "Those same Apple investigators—one of which was later identified as retired San Jose Police sergeant Anthony Colon—offered money for the device and even made veiled threats about contacting the Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) when the search turned up nothing. "One of the officers is like, 'Is everyone in this house an American citizen?' They said we were all going to get into trouble,'" Calderón said."

“Those same Apple investigators [...] made veiled threats about contacting the Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) when the search turned up nothing.”
      --Ars TechnicaAmazing.

In a later post from Laine he uses the title "Is Apple engaging in innovation by intimidation?" This one is even more shocking. Quoting Beta News: "So the next day, my father went to see him; only this time with Luca Brasi -- and within an hour, he signed a release, for a certified check for $1,000...Luca Brasi held a gun to his head and my father assured him that either his brains, or his signature, would be on the contract"

Nice people, eh? Christine Hall already makes fun of Apple for it.

"Apple innovates in Japan" was the third post from Laine that night (yesterday night). It is a sarcastic title because it's actually about Apple trying to block sales of the main rival in Japan. We are talking about the Linux-powered Android, which Apple has engaged in embargo war against [1, 2]. Apple did not innovate this strategy as Microsoft did it first, multiple times too [1, 2, 3].

“Luca Brasi held a gun to his head and my father assured him that either his brains, or his signature, would be on the contract”
      --Beta NewsIt is getting hard to sincerely stick up to Apple and it also looks like the company's new CEO, who started threatening rivals even years ago [1, 2], put Apple on the road to becoming the next Microsoft in the bad sense of the analogy (market abuses and aggression). We've already seen some calls for a CEO swap, even this morning (coming from Mac users).

Yesterday we wrote about Apple's other attacks on Android and also two of Microsoft's. Those two companies now work in tandem against Linux and Linux sites take notice, not just general news sites. Quoting the latter: "Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has already inked lucrative licensing details with General Dynamics Corp. (GD) (owners of Itronix, a maker of rugged tablets) [source]; Velocity Micro, Inc. [source]; Onkyo Corp. [source] (JSD:6628); and HTC Corp. (SEO:066570) [source]. It's pressuring Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (SEO:005930) into a similar licensing deal. Reportedly it wants up to $15 per device sold.

"So what do all these companies have in common? They all use Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Android operating system and all are afraid that Microsoft may make good on its threat to sue them if they don't pay licensing fees."

Microsoft has already sued several times and it typically turns out to involve something like FAT or an application-specific functionality, which elimination of software patents ought to make unpatentable. Let's try to eliminate the problem at the root, which is corruptible officials that let laws be subverted for lobbyists' clients. In the coming days we'll share some leaked cables about patents. ⬆