Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft and Apple Use Intellectual Monopolies to Stifle Competition, Still

Power button



Summary: Microsoft punishes Datel for competing and Apple keeps patenting customer-hostile antifeatures for iOS

Microsoft and Apple both enjoy a monopoly in particular areas. The main difference between them is perhaps the fact that Microsoft broke the law to attain a monopoly position (compare to Google for contrast), not just to sustain it.



Recently, Microsoft needed to compete against Datel, which had more than one dispute with Microsoft. We wrote about their story in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Datel seems to have just given up, thus settling with Microsoft according to Microsoft's boosters in Seattle [1, 2]. Given the items' similarities, Microsoft had a strong case and Datel seemed like a provocateur. According to the another Microsoft booster from Seattle, the antitrust case carries on. It's just that Microsoft managed to tame a controllers competitor.

Apple is increasingly using patents in an aggressive fashion, just like Microsoft. Apple even sued over the use of Linux/Android. Here is Apple patenting spyware right about now. From the EFF:

It looks like Apple, Inc., is exploring a new business opportunity: spyware and what we're calling "traitorware." While users were celebrating the new jailbreaking and unlocking exemptions, Apple was quietly preparing to apply for a patent on technology that, among other things, would allow Apple to identify and punish users who take advantage of those exemptions or otherwise tinker with their devices. This patent application does nothing short of providing a roadmap for how Apple can — and presumably will — spy on its customers and control the way its customers use Apple products. As Sony-BMG learned, spying on your customers is bad for business. And the kind of spying enabled here is especially creepy — it's not just spyware, it's "traitorware," since it is designed to allow Apple to retaliate against you if you do something Apple doesn't like.


The FSF foresaw such malicious features. Also see news articles like:

i. Will Prior Art Doom Apple’s Anti-Theft iPhone Patent?

ii. Apple Inc. (AAPL) Stock Rumors – Will Your Next iPhone Know Your Face?

iii. Apple May Use Behaviour Analysis To Detect Unauthorised Users

iv. "Apple Envisions Tech to Photograph, Record IPhone Thieves

v. Apple may be looking to lock out unauthorized iOS users

This can also be used against the customer under particular circumstances, e.g. after a phone is believed to have been "jailbroken":

i. Apple eyes kill switch for jailbroken iPhones

The application, which was filed in February and published Thursday, specifically describes the identification of “hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking, or removal of a SIM card” so that measures can be taken to counter the user. Possible responses include surreptitiously activating the iPhone's camera, geotagging the image and uploading it to a server and transmitting sensitive data to a server and then wiping it from the device.


ii. Patent it and patent all: Apple's closed-wall garden approach

Apple applied for a new patent to block jailbreaking of its iPhone and iPad series of products, in its bid to maintain a closed-wall garden. A customer enters the new Apple store, which is the world's largest, on its opening day at Covent Garden in London August 7, 2010.

A customer enters the new Apple store, which is the world's largest, on its opening day at Covent Garden in London August 7, 2010.

Although jailbreaking of Apple devices was legalized, Apple intends to patent its mechanism which allows it to detect a jailbroken iphone, iPad or iPod and restore it to factory settings.


Who would choose to become a customer of such a company? A reader of ours who bought a Mac several years ago put GNU/Linux on it some years ago, especially because he realised that Apple had gone rogue. A couple of days ago he explained: "I wonder about the time line here:

Can I use Apple's Runtime APIs?

"On up to and including 10.4, Apple was really doing well by FOSS.

A Brief History of Mac OS X

"Version 10.5 was developed during the worst of Jobs' illness, before major treatment. Version 10.6 was developed during his convalescence.

How Steve Jobs Got Sick, Got Better, And Decided To Save Some Lives

"That leads to questions of what kind of staffing problems arose then during the obligatory absence that now need to be cleaned up to get back into the groove."

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

KillerStartups.com is an LLM Spam Site That Sometimes Covers 'Linux' (Spams the Term)
It only serves to distract from real articles
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, November 21, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, November 21, 2024
Gemini Links 21/11/2024: Alphabetising 400 Books and Giving the Internet up
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: TikTok Fighting Bans, Bluesky Failing Users
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: SpaceX Repeatedly Failing (Taxpayers Fund Failure), Russian Disinformation Spreading
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Earned Two More Honorary Doctorates Last Month
Two more doctorate degrees
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: Game Recommendations, Schizo Language
Links for the day
Growing Older and Signs of the Site's Maturity
The EPO material remains our top priority
Did Microsoft 'Buy' Red Hat Without Paying for It? Does It Tell Canonical What to Do Now?
This is what Linus Torvalds once dubbed a "dick-sucking" competition or contest (alluding to Red Hat's promotion of UEFI 'secure boot')
Links 20/11/2024: Politics, Toolkits, and Gemini Journals
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: 'The Open Source Definition' and Further Escalations in Ukraine/Russia Battles
Links for the day
[Meme] Many Old Gemini Capsules Go Offline, But So Do Entire Web Sites
Problems cannot be addressed and resolved if merely talking about these problems isn't allowed
Links 20/11/2024: Standing Desks, Broken Cables, and Journalists Attacked Some More
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: Debt Issues and Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban
Links for the day
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar), Magna Carta and Debian Freedoms: RIP
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar) & Debian: from Frans Pop to Euthanasia
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
This Article About "AI-Powered" is Itself LLM-Generated Junk
Trying to meet quotas by making fake 'articles' that are - in effect - based on plagiarism?
Recognizing invalid legal judgments: rogue Debianists sought to deceive one of Europe's most neglected regions, Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Google-funded group distributed invalid Swiss judgment to deceive Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: BeagleBone Black and Suicide Rates in Switzerland
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 19, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 19, 2024