Summary: The empire of ripoff comes under fire after revelations about its deceased CEO

MR. JOBS Is gone, but his legacy remains for all of us to suffer from. Several readers have urged us to write about this legacy, but we were collecting existing feedback (as the subject was thoroughly covered in the big publications).

Fabricating evidence, dozens of actions to ban the competition and various other cases of aggression are not an achievement. Exploiting Free software and other people's ideas is not an achievement, either.

"Fabricating evidence, dozens of actions to ban the competition and various other cases of aggression are not an achievement."One person who was once working at MIT told us that Steve Jobs had pressured MIT to keep fostering the GNU project because it was valuable to the industry. But just look what Apple turned into a couple of decades later. Apple is becoming almost worse than Microsoft in certain aspects. And based on new reports, Steve Jobs was very much at the core of the abusive behaviour inside Apple. We shall come to this in a moment.

Over at USENET, Ron quotes Jobs as saying that Microsoft is "mostly irrelevant". This comes from a new biographical book. About Microsoft and its CEO, Steve Ballmer: "In the final pages of the book, written in Mr. Jobs's own words, he described Microsoft as "mostly irrelevant" and said companies like it often ran aground when they were run by salespeople. He singled out Apple's former chief executive, John Sculley, and Microsoft's chief executive, Steve Ballmer, as examples, adding that he didn't think Microsoft would change as long as Ballmer was in charge."

“Bill [Gates] is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas.”
      --Steve JobsAbout Bill Gates: "Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas."

Gates is now promoting patents, just like Jobs does (even after his death).

"Unfortunately," writes Ron, "Jobs seemed incapable of looking in the mirror and applying this to himself."

"We've always been shameless about stealing great ideas," said Steve Jobs. “As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours,”said Bill Gates. They use the word "steal" very spuriously and, as we shall see in a moment, they also make such accusations against Linux/Android, where sharing is encouraged and the word "steal" is hardly ever used. According to TalkAndroid, the "upcoming biography, Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson is scheduled for release next week, but the Associated Press got a copy early. From their descriptions, it sounds like there is some pretty bombshell stuff scrawled on the pages within. Apparently Steve Jobs was so vehemently agitated by Android that no monetary settlements with Google would ever be made. He had every intention to fire all of his guns at once, in effort to obliterate Android from the marketplace. Straight from the book, you’ll find this, quite frankly kind of disturbing, quote,

"“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”"

"Apple sure is scared of Linux/Android and evidence of this is undeniable."It also says that "[i]n a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, California, cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn’t interested in settling the lawsuit..."

The quote goes line this (assuming one kept accurate record of it): “I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.”

Apple sure is scared of Linux/Android and evidence of this is undeniable.

We know that there are Apple fans out there who attempt to discredit Android and back Apple's position, but a lot of rebuttals have been written already. To quote one from Homer, "Jobs vowed to "destroy" Android with his "last dying breath"," his USENET message goes like this:

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From: Homer (Slated.org) Date: Saturday 22 Oct 2011 00:17:55 Groups: comp.os.linux.advocacy

What an evil bastard:

[quote] Steve Jobs said he would spend his "last dying breath" fighting Google's Android mobile operating system because he viewed it as a "stolen product," according to an upcoming biography on the Apple co-founder.

The Associated Press excerpted Jobs' words after obtaining a copy of the book "Steve Jobs," written by noted biographer and former Time executive Walter Isaacson, ahead of its Oct. 24 release date. Though other biographies on the enigmatic entrepreneur have appeared in the past, the book is unique in that it is the only one to be officially authorized by Jobs himself.

According to the report, Isaacson writes about an "expletive-laced rant" that Jobs made to him about Android after the introduction of one particular HTC phone in January 2010.

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs reportedly said. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." [/quote]

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/20/steve_jobs_vowed_to_destroy_google_android_called_it_a_stolen_product.html

Behold the "great" Steve Jobs.

So let's see what Apple "invented":

Android is a Dalvik shell running on Linux, incorporating applications primarily for communication, such as E-mail and Web browsing, and many third-party applications for other tasks. The visual design is roughly a grid of icons on a desktop, with full screen menus for preferences.

Dalvik is derived from Java, Sun's "open source" development platform, but which its new, patent-troll owner, Oracle, now claims needed to be licensed and paid for when implemented... on mobile platforms, despite the former owner giving Google its explicit blessing to do so.

Apple did not invent Java, or Dalvik. Java was invented in 1995 by Sun employee James Gosling, who (ironically) later joined Google, and most recently joined a startup company called Liquid Robotics.

Linux is an operating system kernel ideologically based on Minix, that was further ideologically based on Unix. Andrew Tanenbaum, the creator of Minix, has explicitly stated Linux did not copy any code from Minix whatsoever, and is not a "rip-off".

Apple did not invent Linux, or Unix. Unix was invented by Thompson and Ritchie at AT&T Bell Labs in 1969, whilst Jobs was still trying to get his first date in high school, and was being taught how to not put the round peg in the square hole by his foster parents.

The communication application interfaces on Android are based on KHTML technology, which was later assimilated by Apple, then renamed WebKit, and various industry standards for communication protocols established by the Internet Engineering Task Force and many others.

Apple did not invent KHTML, or WebKit, or any communication protocols. Even Bonjour is just Apple's reimplementation of Zeroconf, which was a protocol developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. In fact the person most directly responsible for Zeroconf was Erik Guttman of Sun, not Apple:

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=613609 http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/webExtensions/elections/SA/SA2/Election_April_2011/SA2_GUTTMAN_Chairman.pdf

The concept of a grid of icons on a desktop was invented by Xerox PARC way back in 1973, and only assimilated by Jobs, when he was allowed to peek inside the Palo Alto facility in exchange for stock options.

Apple did not invent the GUI, or icons, or grids of icons, or windows, or mice, or pointers, or any other aspect of desktop computing. All of that was invented by Xerox PARC, including drop-down/pop-up menus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface#Xerox_PARC

Apple invented nothing, Jobs invented nothing, and his vicious crusade against others implementing ideas that had nothing to do with him is one of the most sickening chapters in the history of technology.

May the name "Steve Jobs" be forever remembered as an evil tyrant, who fraudulently laid claim to others' creations, and swore with his dying breath to destroy all those who were not beholden to him and his reign of tyranny.

May he burn in Hell.

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Strong words. Another poster calls this "Apple's premeditated patent aggression against Linux Android" and says that it "looks like Apple hallucinatories had pre-meditated the patent aggression against Linux android from day 1 because they were hallucinating!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Some sources alleged that Jobs also resorted to "alternative medicine" (placebo treatment) rather than procedures that could save his life."He is referring to other reports based on the book, referring specifically to Steve Jobs' drug use, which is more of a personal angle. "So this patent aggression with a $40bn war chest is completely premeditated. Any judge looking at that should think very carefully about the judgments that are being handed down. No one has the right to sue every tom dick and harry because they got money in the bank and want to grab even more by manufacturing reasons and using the courts to hand out verdicts that are systematically unfair given the *whole* picture."

He adds: "Far east manufacturing companies should also look hard at servicing any more orders from Apple. Unless they undertake written commitments by Apple to not sue you or your customers who are buying androids components and devices from you, you should avoid doing business and definitely not share your best tech with Apple.

"Most far east companies now gift their most advanced technologies to open source, Linux and Android companies. They make a lot more money doing that than go play judge and jury games with Apple's patent trolling management who are out trying to impoverish any and all companies that do business with Apple."

For those who are interested in the personal issues with Jobs, there is this article from a reputable source. One poster in USENET jokingly wrote: "The whole empire was built on LSD addiction!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

From the article: "The 630-page account of the technology pioneer's life reveals intimate details of his relationships, how he was influenced by LSD and railed against executives at Apple who, he believed, cared more about making money than good products."

But as we later found out, Jobs was willing to blow $40 billion on just destroying Android. What will shareholders say? "Apple should spend their $40bn cleaning up their electronics manufacturing waste mess in their China factories and pay the locals compensation before these factories are all shut down," writes the USENET poster.

To quote more from the article: "Jobs also describes how taking LSD had "reinforced my sense of what was important: creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.""

More mysticism. Some sources alleged that Jobs also resorted to "alternative medicine" (placebo treatment) rather than procedures that could save his life. But that again is a personal angle which does not relate to the technical and cannot be properly verified (Wikileaks also contains alleged evidence of Jobs having HIV).

"Jobs then proceeded to renounce greed by ... making a $337 billion company and an $8.6 billion personal fortune, without ever donating even a single dime to charity, and "reinforced his sense of what was important" by ... selling trivial toy gadgets, then went on to oppress any competition with patent extortion and litigation, thuggishly and hypocritically hoarding ideas he merely stole from others, whilst vowing with his dying breath to destroy everyone else, like a frothing maniac," wrote another poster. "Yup, definitely the hallucinatory effects of LSD. Of course it helps if one is already an evil bastard in the first place."

As the latter poster put it: "It's hard to work with addicts and their violent character, particularly in a business environment where getting the work done and taking responsibilities are a big part of daily chores to bring in the daily bread. I pity all who were his coworkers. I hope they sue the crap out of Apple if they were subject to daily abuse from drug addicted management.

"No one has rights to inflict abuse on fellow workers if their manager chose to be an LSD addict and visit them with daily abuse."

Last night we saw funny comment from a troll, who said: "The steve jobs attacks are funded by the FSF, and carried out by Techrights and its supporters."

"Does the man behind ARM know that Steve Jobs claim credit for things he never came up with?"Now, that was funny. We find it flattering that one might draw a connection between us and the FSF (none exists).

The only thing Android stole was Jobs' thunder. Richard Stallman was right about Jobs. And just because we agree with the FSF on many issues does not mean we are, in fact, in any way related to it. We are 100% independent. We always were.

This afternoon I had the pleasure of sitting down in a local coffee shop talking to a Ph.D. graduate of Sir Stephen Furber, who is one of 'the' public faces of ARM. Does the man behind ARM know that Steve Jobs claim credit for things he never came up with? Either way, the man I spoke to detests Apple for many of the reasons we covered here over the years. ⬆