Bonum Certa Men Certa

More Reasons to Boycott Apple, Which Abuses Courts, Engages in Competition Crime, and Aids Espionage

Summary: The evil side of Apple explained in light of some recent news, suggesting that choosing Apple can be even worse than choosing Microsoft

THE BRANDING company Apple is considered by some, including Richard Stallman, to be even worse than Microsoft. As we came to discover in recent years, Apple -- like Microsoft -- is willing to go nuclear in trying to ban Linux devices from the market. Apple itself, ironically enough, is ordering the manufacturing of devices from some of the same companies whose products it tries to ban.



Apple and Microsoft don't always sue Linux backers directly; they have commonalities in the sense that they back patent trolls and create some of their own. The Apple- and Microsoft-backed Rockstar, for instance, has been suing to hurt Android and Google fights back. As FOSS Force put it: "We also learned this week that Google has taken its first actions in response to Rockstar Consortium’s suit filed on Halloween against Google and a group of Android device manufacturers. According to a report posted Christmas Eve on Gigaom, Google has returned fire by filing a lawsuit against Rockstar."

How can one sue a troll? What can one sue a troll for? Newegg has spent a lot of time and money fighting with trolls at ITC, so it should know how fruitless a process this can be. For Google, as in the case of Newegg, there's just too much to lose if the troll gets fed. Gigaom's headline says that "Google sues to protect Android device makers from Apple-backed patent hell," so there's a matter of loyalty to partners here. In effect, Microsoft and Apple now successfully use proxies like Rockstar (and other trolls they equip with patents, although Nokia is just Microsoft's proxy, it doesn't play ball with Apple [1]) to hit Android hard. Apple itself, according to this summary of a report, has a "new bid for Samsung sales ban". To quote: "Apple is again seeking to ban sales in the US of Samsung products that were at issue in the companies’ first patent trial in California and are now no longer on the market.

"The iPhone-maker asked US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose to bar sales of more than 20 smartphones and tablets, such as the Galaxy S 4G and Galaxy Tab 10.1, that a jury last year found to infringe Apple’s patents.

"While Koh rejected Apple’s bid for a sales ban on the infringing Samsung devices after the 2012 verdict, a US federal appeals court on November 18 cleared the way for it to pursue an injunction targeting some of its rival’s products."

Coming from a criminal company that engages in price-fixing (and gets fined), Apple's claim that it's about justice is ludicrous at best.

Those who are not already boycotting "Apple"-branded products probably just don't know enough about this company, whose products are in many ways more hostile than PCs with Windows installed. Macbook webcams can be remotely activated without any sign [2,3], for example, and security updates are not a priority [4]. The NSA has been partly involved in Apple's development, so we should assume, by default, that Apple operating systems have back doors.

The only "amazing" thing at Apple is that the company still finds enough fools who are eager to queue up in expectation of a digital prison.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. Nokia pulls Here Maps from the App Store, blames iOS 7
    In the wake of Maps-gate, Nokia was one of several outfits that rushed to Apple's aid with a navigation app of its very own. A year later, however, and that same offering has been yanked from the App Store before it could send a note to its neighbors. When we asked, Nokia responded with the below quote, saying that iOS 7 harms the user experience of HERE, but users can still access the mobile edition of the service. Which is all well and good, unless you were a big fan of the app's ability to cache offline data.


  2. Macbook webcams can be remotely activated without any sign
    In a paper called iSeeYou: Disabling the MacBook Webcam Indicator LED, security researchers Matthew Brocker and Stephen Checkoway explained a method for remotely operating the Isight webcam in Apple's Macbook laptops.


  3. Software Allows Hackers to Activate MacBook Webcams Without Green Warning Light
    A recently resolved criminal case shows how a man was able to hack a high school classmate's laptop in order to take nude photographs with her computer's camera without her knowledge, before attempting to use the images to extort her, reports The Washington Post.


  4. Mavericks: The end of Macs in the enterprise?
    Macs have never been that popular in business. But if Apple is indeed no longer supporting security updates for older Mac OS X versions, Macs won't have any place left in the enterprise office.


Recent Techrights' Posts

Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric
Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
 
Links 10/06/2025: Jaws at 50 and US Democracy Crushed Very Rapidly (Martial Law Seems Imminent)
Links for the day
If 'Microsoft v Techrights' is Dealt With by a 'Microsoft Court' (or a Court Outsourced to Microsoft)
More on that later
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year