Bonum Certa Men Certa

Linux is Hurting Apple, So Steve Jobs Starts Spreading FUD, Gets Told Off


Andy Rubin, photo by Yoichiro Akiyama (Tokyo, Japan)



Summary: Andy Rubin (above) and Iain Dodsworth, the founder of TweetDeck, respond to lies told by Steve Jobs, whose products no longer sell well because of competition from Linux-powered devices

Steve Jobs, the control freak who is suing to prevent companies from selling Linux, is becoming no better than the other Steve (Ballmer, not Wozniak). He is spreading FUD about the competition, which is a loser's strategy when you're a CEO. Yes, Jobs is speaking badly about Android and he only gets backlash for it.



Jobs has reasons to be afraid of GNU/Linux. It does more than Apple's operating system, it runs on more hardware, and it is a lot more affordable. PC Pro currently runs the article "Why I prefer Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition to the iPad" and it's a reminder of the fact that hypePad may have catching up to do as less than 0.1% of the world's people have one and it is far too limiting. Syanide says:

4.2 million people. They expected even more. I doubt any figures for Android tablets even exist.


Android is sold by many companies and they can fork it, too. hypePad is a one-company thing, it's a monopoly.

Here is what PC Pro thinks of the hypePad;

I should admit that I come to the iPad pre-irritated by Apple’s attempts to swaddle the thing in a wholly unearned sense of awe. A “magical, revolutionary device”? Please: the telephone was a revolutionary device. It’s like when some 20-year old would-be Apprentice declares “I am the best manager you’ll ever meet”: I want to smack him twice, once for the arrogance and again for the delusion.


Jobs is speaking negatively about Android right now. He knows that few people (a niche of hardcore clients) would be willing to pay a lot more for just a brand name on a tablet that will always have even more restrictions. As the Financial Times puts it, "Apple iPad sales fail to hit forecasts" and it oughtn't surprise.

Sales of Apple’s iPad have failed to meet the steadily rising expectations for the touchscreen tablet device, letting some of the air out of the enthusiasm that has built on Wall Street in recent weeks.

Apple’s shares slipped more than 6 per cent in after-hours trading after it said it had sold 4.2m of the devices in the three months to the end of September, below the 5m that some had €­projected. It sold 3.3m after being introduced part of the way through the prior quarter.


As we pointed out yesterday, Jobs has started a FUD attack on Android and Google has responded politely to show that he was lying.

If you haven't heard by now, Steve Jobs pretty much lost his sh-- (shut yo mouth!) yesterday during Apple's earnings call -- going way above and beyond his usual diatribe over Google and Android. To say it's entertaining is pretty much the understatement of the year. And what's more -- these were prepared remarks. Somebody thought about this for a bit.

Jobs calls stock Android "a commodity" and invents the "Twitterdeck" Twitter client to rail against all of the different handsets developers must contend with. (Of course he meant Tweetdeck -- only one of the more popular Twitter clients out there.)

[...]

Anyhoo, Android's Andy Rubin fired up Twitter this morning to post his first Tweet, which you see above. Pretty much speaks for itself.

Our take? It's telling how much time Jobs spent on his competitors in the earnings call. Best way to downplay the competition is to dismiss it. No longer. And in the process, Jobs is coming off more a loon and less a sage. Listen for yourself after the break.


Jobs not only lied about Android. In the process, he also lied about application developers for Android and TweetDeck's CEO, for example, responds quite strongly according to Engadget and Business Insider which says:

This morning, Iain Dodsworth, founder of TweetDeck, responded to Jobs with a tweet: "Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errr nope, no we didn't. It wasn't."

If you look at the original TweetDeck post about all the Android handsets, and Android OSes out there, you can see the company is impressed by it all, not annoyed: "From our perspective it's pretty cool to have our app work on such a wide variety of devices and Android OS variations."


Business Insider has a video of "Steve Jobs's Epic 5-Minute Anti-Google Rant":

In a surprise, Steve Jobs joined Apple's Q3 earnings call today.


Here is the video as ogg. It ought to remind people that Apple is hostile and harmful to GNU/Linux. It's just spreading FUD and suing.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Steve Jobs with patent
Original photo by Matt Buchanan; edited by Techrights

Recent Techrights' Posts

Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October