Apple vs. the World

Over on his blog, Louis Gray has a thoughtful post about Apple's latest attempts to legally thwart its competitors, this time in the arena of patent-infringement. Here's a good point that Louis makes:

But the volley of lawsuits smacks of preemptive desperation, not from a company in trouble by any means, but by one that wants to make sure it won't ever be.

In March of 2010, former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote a post, titled, in a nod to Jobs, "Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal". In the post, he claimed that Apple going after the competition raised their visibility and relevancy to the market.

I have to say that this sounds pretty spot on. A lot of regular folks (i.e. non-techies) are aware of the iPhone and the iPad, but I'd wager that they're not as familiar with the Samsung Galaxy phones and Tab. But they probably soon will be, if Apple keeps this up.

This also smacks a bit of being ever-so-slightly overly litigious. While no one can dispute that Apple's designs for smartphones and tablets are the gold standard and, yes, have been the... ahem... inspiration (shall we say) for several smartphones and tablets ever since, it's also a fact of life that the business world thrives on competition, and that imitation is the sincerest (and most common) form of flattery.

After all, most cars (for example) look the same. They have the same basic build. The form factor varies a bit from car-to-car, as well as the build-quality and special features. But they all have doors, tires, engines, windows, trunks/hatches, hoods, etc. I don't see how smartphones and tablets are any different. They all pretty much follow a similar build pattern, with somewhat different form factors. But they all have screens, keypads (virtual or physical), speakers, etc.

Apple should be proud to be the groundbreaking, innovative, highly-copied and successful company that it is, and get over it.

Comments

Yesterday's Restaurants

The local newspaper has a feature from one of Champaign-Urbana's most legendary restaurateur's, John Katsinas, on what his favorite area restaurants were that have now since closed (or will soon be closing). It's a nice little read, and has made me stop and think about the restaurants that have come and gone that have left an indelible (and edible) impression on me throughout the years. Here we go....

Watching The Hours

A Twitter friend named Paula has asked for folks to submit ideas for a blog-a-thon about what we think will be the classic films of the future. In other words, what relatively recent movies (namely, from the 21st century), do we think will be considered classics in the decades to come, possibly airing on such venerable stations as Turner Classic Movies ? While a number of films come to mind for such a category, one in particular stood out from the rest, and thus is my entry for Paula's blog-a-thon.

She's Madonna

Today we're going to talk about something very important. We're going to talk about Madonna. "Madge," as she's affectionately known around the gay scene, has been making music for over thirty years. I grew up with her songs, many of them pop classics. In recent years, it can be arguably said that her popularity has waned a bit. During the past decade, Madonna has put out seventeen singles. Of those, three have charted in the US Top 40. Ten Failed to chart at all on the Billboard Hot 100. We now have at least one possibility offered as to why Madge's chart power is waning: Ageism. At least, that's what Diplo (just, Diplo), a producer of some of the tracks off her latest album, thinks . I know it's difficult to be objective about something you've worked on -- whether you were the producer or the artist -- but, as a listener/fan, I have to say that Madonna's most recent work has simply not been that good. Still, we'll hear what ...

Left to my own devices

Search This Blog