This week’s Twit thinks a tort is a tasty crème-filled treat. In fact all of this week’s Twits are engaged in feloniously foolish and often cretinously craven lawsuits that, in some cases, are destroying people’s lives and even entire industries. Arbitration and fair competition are for losers, at least according to:
Apple Inc.
Beneath all that fruity goodness is a heart of cyanide.
Apple Computer, a half-assed fashion company that makes a living parading around as a half-assed technology company, has gorged mightily at the trough of self-importance yet again. Founded by sociopath and all-round asshole Steve Jobs (who managed to run out Steve Wozniak, the real genius behind Apple), it is of little shock that the corporate culture at this ego-maniacal institution could be classified, in the kindest possible terms, as toxic.
Let’s get one thing straight right away. Steve Jobs was a hack. He failed at most everything he did (anyone remember NeXT?). The way he made Apple succeed was by berating people that worked for him, threatening/suing everyone that didn’t and stealing every decent idea he came across. All an Apple product constitutes is someone else’s product in a shinier case emblazoned with a Macintosh apple. These policies, which are stupendously destructive of the creative environment that Apple supposedly supports, are the reason Apple is doing well today.
Apple stole GUI fron PARC, then sued Microsoft for supposedly stealing it from them (Microsoft would later save Apple from bankruptcy). Apple sued HTC, Samsung and every other major smartphone maker for stealing design ideas from the iPhone, but they stole iPhone lock, stock and barrel from Nokia – and they even stole the name from a 1999 phone made by InfoGear, later acquired by Cisco.
Think tablets are a new idea? iPad is just the latest iteration of a successful concept that has been around for decades. iOS an innovation? Android, which Steve Jobs famously decried as “stolen” from Apple, was in existence for years before its less-successful, close-sourced fruit-stamped competitor. So was Windows Mobile, Symbian and Blackberry OS.
So when I see Apple suing everyone and their mother, it is just another page in the book of Apple’s pig-headed, close-minded and destructive nature. Samsung’s recent loss to Apple in federal court was not based on facts or law. It was based on the contrived image Apple has spent billions feeding to the American public.
An America where Apple dominates the market is a bleak one. Their monolithic, totalitarian technological system stifles development and creativity. If you need an example of this, simply look at how primitive the last two iPhones are compared to their Samsung counterparts. We can expect more of this if the federal government gives Apple back their old hegemony over the mobile market.
It is our civic duty to make sure this doesn’t happen, people. Open innovation, like the sort represented by Samsung, Google and Unbuntu is the best path towards continued technological advancement, not the closed-minded and clunky cult of the glowing apple.
1 Comment
I know where you’re coming from Teddy, but don’t be hating on the Apple.
Once upon a time I would walk past the Apple store, look in and laugh at all the trendy young trendsetters/early adopters blowing their meager earnings on the latest iPod, iPhone and iPad just for the status of having the latest gizmo with an Apple logo on it.
While the Apple ‘culture’ was annoying to me, I’ve been using MacBook’s at work for years and always liked them. They’re more intuitive than PCs and not as prone to viruses. Pretty much a trouble-free experience.
Well, the hard-drive on my Mac finally crapped out which meant a trip to the Apple store. It was a Tuesday morning and the mall was dead…except for Apple. It was teeming with annoying people spending large sums of money in the middle of the worst economy since the Great Depression.
A lightbulb went off in my head and now I love those annoying people and here’s why: I bought Apple stock shortly after that trip to the store and it is going through the roof with no sign of letting up soon. If it continues this way for the next few years, I’ll actually get to retire some day. Long live Apple.