Bonum Certa Men Certa

All Your Fruit Are Belong to Apple


Photo of the Xerox Alto, taken by Martin Pittenauer



"Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox’s store before I did and took the TV doesn’t mean I can’t go in later and steal the stereo."

--Bill Gates, Microsoft



Summary: Apple's abusive behaviour (e.g. trademark bullying and patent hoarding) is noted and responded to

LAST night we wrote about Apple's abusive behaviour. With wealth comes Hubris, so it's time to call Nemesis out again. It came out and nearly bankrupted Apple just over a decade ago.



Continuing the subject we addressed last night, Apple thinks that it owns the name of a fruit and now "Appl" too. As a Microsoft sympathiser put it:

[T]he team has decided to organise a naming contest for the Amahi application store. My personal favourite so far? Appl store. You know, appl, short for application. It's sad that they have to go through this, but I fully understand them in not being willing to take on Apple in court.


For those who have not paid attention, Apple sent a threat to an open source project for using the "Appl" word. There is also a trademark on "app store". As Neil Richards put it, "Apple has already sued Amazon.com for using the term for its own Android store. It was not Apple which conceptualized the name AppStore. The name came from former Apple executive Marc Benioff, now head of Salesforce."

Isn't that ironic?

In other Apple news, what Apple calls "pro" is actually outright rubbish, based on this report from another Microsoft sympathiser. She writes:

Apple released a completely overhauled version of its Final Cut Pro software yesterday, much to the chagrin of some of its users.

The early response to Final Cut Pro X is at best mixed, with some complaining that the film editing application lacks XML support, and worse still, is bereft of backward compatibility with previous versions of the software.

Others who use Final Cut Pro are saying it's too early to be moaning about the application, which Apple said yesterday had been "rebuilt from the ground up".

The complete re-write of the software has left many film and video editors perplexed by the radical changes to Apple's Final Cut Pro, which competes with Avid in the film editing software market.

A steady stream of insults against and in support of Apple is currently flowing around the blogosphere.


As we stated many time before, Apple had ripped off so many other companies (not just Xerox) and resorted to using its hype machine. It then pretended that it actually invented what was shamelessly lifted. Apple is currently patenting many ideas on which there is clearly prior art, most latterly this patent on touch screens:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple a key patent for touch screen functionality on portable devices, such as the iPhone and iPad.


For a little bit of context, Xerox had touch screens even in the 1980s. None of this is new and Apple's alleged invention is probably a little tweak upon existing knowledge. Apple is the Edison of the 21st century--the aggressive patent troll who is mistakenly believed to be an innovator. All Edison did was take other people's ideas, made minor changes to them, and then claimed credit for them (using a patent). He hacked the patent system. Edison was just a businessman, like Bill Gates. To him, technology was just a way of doing business and gaining power/glory. He happens to be the man behind GE, which is a prominent proponent of software patents [1, 2, 3].

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

"Victory Day" - Part II: Abject Defeat to Hypocrites and Objectionable People Who Strangle Women Whilst on Microsoft's Payroll
Someone is going to have to pay for this; it won't be us
Rust Propaganda Now Amplified by Slopfarms Powered by Microsoft LLMs, Encouraging the Outsourcing of GNU/Linux Distros to Microsoft/GitHub/NSA (and a Shift Away From GPL/Copyleft)
Moving to Microsoft GitHub and adopting unfinished, untested code for highly critical bits
IBM is Rotting With "Zero Internal Jobs" and Many PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans) on the Way, Typically a Fast Track Towards Layoffs Without Severance
At risk of giving air(time) to tribal sentiments, the internal joke at IBM is that to IBM "AI" stands for "All Indian"
The Gerstnerisation of Microsoft: Seventh Wave of Microsoft Layoffs (Over 20,000 to be Cut) Allegedly Going to Start Shortly, Probably Start of Next Week, Microsoft Spreads Chaff and Noise Before the Big Axes Fall
we might be looking at about 50,000 people that Microsoft gets rid of this year
 
Blizzard/Microsoft Unions Grow Ahead of Mass Layoffs at Microsoft, Apparently Starting Next Week (as Many as 30,000 Workers Laid Off by Year's End)
Microsoft already fired about 5,000-6,000 workers this year by our estimates; that's not counting resignations compelled through pressure (i.e. pushed, did not jump) and contractors
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 09, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, May 09, 2025
Links 09/05/2025: Inflation Rising and Rights to Protest Curtailed Some More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/05/2025: Good and Evil, LLMs Made the Web Worse Yet Again
Links for the day
European Patent Office (EPO) Faked "Revenue Expansion" by Granting Loads of Invalid, Illegal Patents; Staff Still Wants to Know Where That Money Went
Only about 30% of the EPO's patents are for EU entities/people
Links 09/05/2025: TeleMessage Blunder, More Distractions From Impending Mass Layoffs at Microsoft
Links for the day
GNU (and the FSF) Still Changing the World
Today, in 2025, GNU powers almost everything
Military-Grade Anti-Linux Microsoft Propaganda Using Microsoft LLMs in Fake 'News' Sites (Slopfarms)
This is part of a pattern
Links 09/05/2025: Analog Computer and First time at FOSDEM
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 08, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 08, 2025
Links 08/05/2025: Mass Layoffs at Google Again, India/Pakistan Tensions Continue to Grow, New Pope (US) Selected
Links for the day
"Victory Day" - Part I: That is the Day Microsofters Who Assault Women Pay for Their Actions in Foreign Land (Using "Guns for Hire" Who Attack Their Own Country for American Dollars)
Adding a friend from Microsoft to the docket didn't help
Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security
Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
Gemini Links 08/05/2025: Practical Gemini Use Case, Shutdown of the Blanket Fort Webring
Links for the day
Links 08/05/2025: "Slop Presidency", US Government Defunds Public Broadcasting
Links for the day
Lasse Fister, Organiser of Libre Graphics Meeting, Points Out the Code of Conduct is Likely Violated by the Same People Who Promote Codes of Conduct (and Then Bully Him Into Cancelling a Keynote)
I am starting to see Lasse Fister as another victim
LLM Slop Attacks Not Only Sites of Free Software Projects But Also Bug Reporting Systems (Time-wasting, in Effect "DDoS")
Microsoft, the leading purveyor and promoter of slop, is a cancer
The Richard Stallman (RMS) "European Tour" Carries on In Spite of the Nuremberg Incident
Some people spoke about how they saw yesterday's talk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 07, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 07, 2025