radarthekat

TheDude121 said:

Whew, forum is bias to the max

Anyway - with Apples 500+ lawyers, I don't think it'll get anywhere.

Plus, they're the kings at suing people ... remember a few years ago they just sued and banned their competitors from certain markets, rather just upping their game? 
Didn't they sue because of rectangle and squares and corners?

Here you go, I’ll help you reduce your ignorance on the topic... (this is an essay on the topic I wrote a long while back)

Since the Apple vs Samsung trial there has been much written about the merit of design patents.  I thought I'd provide a bit of insight here for those who might not be conversant in the topic.

Among Apple's assertions in its lawsuit was that Samsung copied elements of the iPhone and iPad for which Apple holds several patents.  These particular patents are known as design patents.  It seems a lot of folks don't take these patents seriously and go as far as to suggest that they should not exist.  There is a good reason why they do exist, but to explain this we have to begin with a bit of a side trip and requires that we speak about trademark law.  Bear with me on this and hopefully I'll be able to clarify the purpose of design patents and provide some insights into the Apple versus Samsung trial.

Most people are familiar with the idea of a trademark.  By way of example, Kellogg, the cereal maker, has a trademark on Tony the Tiger and fought a battle with Exxon over Kellogs' claim that the use of an unnamed tiger in Exxon's advertising violates Kellogg's trademark for Tony the Tiger.  Why?  For 30 years, Exxon used its tiger character exclusively to promote its gasoline blend, but then, in the 1990's began using it to sell food. Kellogg said consumers are confused by the similarity between the cartoon tigers and may conclude that Kellogg is somehow behind soda, coffee and other items for sale at Exxon's TigerMart stores.  The case went back and forth for several years, with Exxon initially winning the case, but ultimately losing on appeal.  This case would not seem extraordinary to most people as most folks understand the concept of protecting a unique trademark like Kellogg's Tony the Tiger character.

Now let's look at another case, one that comes closer to the Apple vs Samsung case, but still an application of trademark law.  This case is Ferrari vs Robert's Replicas.  Back in the 1980's Robert's Replica's was in the business of manufacturing fiberglass kits that replicated the exterior features of Ferrari's Daytona Spyder and Testarossa automobiles. Roberts' copies were called the Miami Spyder and the Miami Coupe, respectively.  Ferrari brought suit against Roberts in March 1988 alleging trademark infringement. 

Here's what this case was about:  After Ferrari vehicles have been on the market for a number of years, the design of those vehicles acquires what's called "secondary meaning", a concept at the heart of trademark law.  Secondary meaning refers to an association of a design, like the design of a Ferrari vehicle, with quality and craftsmanship or other positive attributes one might associate with the Ferrari brand.  After a design has acquired secondary meaning, trademark law can be applied to protect the company from those who would copy its designs and use them to promote their own products.  Robert's copying of Ferrari's iconic designs could confuse the public and dilute the strength of Ferrari's brand.  Just the presence of large numbers of replicas would dilute Ferrari's image of exclusivity, causing financial harm to Ferrari.  Trademark law, under the concept of secondary meaning, protected Ferrari.  The courts ruled in favor of Ferrari in this case and enjoined Roberts from producing the Miami Spyder and the Miami Coupe.

But how does this relate to design patent law? 

The problem with using trademark law to protect a company's designs (under trademark law a product design or package design is referred to as "trade dress") is that a product has to be on the market for a long time before its design acquires secondary meaning (i.e. before the design becomes iconic and is seen by consumers as representative of the company behind the product). When competitors come in immediately after a new product design is introduced and copy it, as is the assertion in the Apple vs Samsung case, the originator of the design doesn't have the luxury of time needed for its product design to acquire secondary meaning in the eyes of consumers.  Consumers immediately see the same design from multiple companies and so don't grow to associate the design with the company that originated that design.

This is where design patents come in. Where trademark protection of an iconic product design has no expiration, it takes time for a new product to acquire that protection (as stated above). A design patent offers immediate protection of a new and novel design and for a period of 14 years thereafter, giving a company protection of its original designs until they acquire secondary meaning in the market and therefore protection under trademark law. So the design patent serves a valuable function for companies like Ferrari, and Apple.

coastalgathering said:

Until you’ve worked in Apple retail you have no idea what the day to day looks like. 

14 years and I have had many years that I loved my job..I would not of stayed so long if I hadn’t. 

You meet amazing people that are so intelligent and creative. Life long friendships. Both co-workers and customers. The customers are part of our communities. The products are amazing!  You are allowed to bring your unique and diverse best self to work everyday. 

Until it all changes…like everything good it comes to an end. 

If the pandemic didn’t teach most of us that life is short, who wants to slave in the retail stores so Tim Cook can build is trillion dollar dreams! 

The hours are tough! Everyday you work different  shifts, no set schedule! Your availability has to be open. Your life is not your own. No time for your family on the weekends or evenings, No seniority!  The environment is loud and intense, try standing in those “special”floors for 8 hours a day. 

Getting yelled at by a different customer then the  pre pandemic customer. Cause the community customers are now far and few between. 

Being told good job on your time management, now take on another customer please, now working with 2-3 customers at the same time in the genus bar. Yearly performance review for the last 12 years has been . 24 cent increase!!! 

At a Meets expectations .54 cent increase at a Exceeds expectations! 

The story can go on and on…but until you do it you’ll never understand what a underpaid tough job it is.  

I am grateful for many things, it’s just not an easy job anymore. Now that I am an older employee, I feel I have no job protection and it’s harder then ever, I don’t deserve to just have to walk away and “find another job” this was my career, I have gave it everything, sacrificed my family times to build this career . Now at 55 I can look and see it wasn’t worth it. 

Post pandemic has opened my eyes to life is too short to give it all up to  

Too short to give up to Apple or to any employer.  Did Apple tell you at the start of your career with them that there would be a promotion track off the retail floor?  If they did, then you should have left when that didn’t materialize after a number of years.  If they didn’t then it’s on you making the assumption there was upward mobility for you away from the retail floor.  In that case you need to, at some point, re-evaluate your career path.  You clearly haven’t been happy with the raises, and I don’t blame you; 24, or 54, cents an hour doesn’t enhance a person’s life.

I went through a re-evaluation in my career and here’s how that went.  I have a high school education, self-taught in electronics and programming and technical writing.  After six years in a small startup run by a Harvard MBA, I felt I was doing work far above my remuneration.  So I went to him and I stated my case.  I told him that I felt I was grossly underpaid, that I’d leave it to him to decide if he agreed, but if he decides I’m not underpaid, then that places the decision back in my hands.  And then I quietly reminded him that I know very well how-to make decisions.  Two days later I got the biggest raise you can imagine, plus stock options.  I remained with the company and a few years later he and I went on to found another software company together.  

Seems like there’s gotta be a medical/health focus on this site choice.  That’s a major focus of the Research Triangle.  Apple would want access to that professional employee base and proximity to the universities and other research entities there if they are planning a big push into some health-related products.  And Tim did say, a few years back, that Apple will ultimately be remembered for its contributions in the health field even more so than for the iPhone (a very significant statement to make). 

This might be a good spot to drop a pair of essays I wrote back in 2013…

What I learned from Warren Buffett and 30 years in the market

But mostly from Warren Buffett.

PART 1

INVESTING VERSUS SPECULATION

It seems the first level of wisdom a prospective investor hears and integrates is the old saw about diversification. And that's about as far as it goes for many who casually participate in the market.  The problem with diversification is that, even if you are diversified, you'll still likely have in your portfolio several holdings that don't fit the definition of a good investment.

Those who go a bit farther in their studies begin to have a more nuanced comprehension and come to realize that not all businesses and opportunities represent investments. So what do these other businesses and opportunities represent if not investments? The answer is that anything that isn't an investment is speculation.  To be successful with individual stocks/businesses, you should carry in your mind a definition of these two concepts.  Here are my working definitions of the two terms:

"An investment is a commitment to holding a security as long as the underlying fundamentals and business prospects remain intact." 

Take Apple, for example. Apple shares are an investment as long as Apple continues to perform as well as it is currently performing. As long as it continues to generate the revenues and earnings it is currently generating.  Even if neither rise.

"Speculation is a bet on some future outcome, either positive or negative, that would materially change the fortunes of a business."

Note that the main difference here is that an investment relies upon the continuation of the status quo while speculation is a bet against the status quo.  

GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT), a maker of solar manufacturing equipment, is an example of a speculative bet, and one that went terribly wrong for those who made that bet.  In 2012 and 2013, GTAT saw its solar business collapse under the weight of competition from Chinese manufacturers.  Late in 2013, GTAT partnered with Apple to manufacture sapphire display glass, presumably for use on the iPhone 6.  GTAT needed that partnership to go well; it represented GTAT’s lifeline to a corporate reboot, a chance to reinvent itself in a new line of business in which it had little experience.  That reinvention, if successful, would materially enhance the value of the company.  If a failure, it would mark the collapse of GTAT as a viable business.  GTAT did fail, and filed for bankruptcy protection.  In the process, the share price went from a high of about $20 to about 40 cents.  Many of those holding the shares indignantly complained in online forums that their investment was wiped out by unscrupulous actions of GTAT's CEO and management team.  They weren’t wrong about the actions of GTAT’s management, but they were wrong in characterizing their GTAT holdings as an investment.  These people were speculating and paid a high price.

It's those who don't understand the difference between an investment and a speculative bet who always end up convinced the market is rigged. These folks likely put money into one or more companies with business models that represented a speculative bet on some unlikely outcome, lost their money and associated that experience with the entire experience of participating in the market. How many times have you heard someone say the stock market is like a casino? Well, I liken the stock market, at the hands of a participant who has done his/her research and applied appropriate metrics, to a casino where you get to see your blackjack hand and the dealer’s up card before you place your bet and where you have the option of betting big, betting small, or not betting at all on each hand. The odds are strongly in your favor, but you can still do something foolish.  If you get your head on straight, stick to companies that represent a valid investment according to the above definition, and avoid speculation, at least until you have learned the hedging and other strategies associated with successful speculation, you’ll increase both your chances of a successful investment career and your returns throughout that career.

Psamathos said:

This seems like a whole load of posturing and blackmail to me. Basically they are saying "we can't enable screen sharing to apps that Apple hasn't authorised because they might allow data to go somewhere that violates the users' privacy". Well, you know, you could always ask the user, couldn't you? Maybe a dialogue box the first time you connect to an app that's not signed by Apple isn't the absolutely perfect user experience, but it's an awful lot better than killing the feature all together. Given that Apple's own app store doesn't have a perfect record on vetting applications, that same pop-up-on-first-connect would probably be useful for Apple App Store apps too.

So no, this isn't EU regulation causing problems. This is Apple causing problems and attempting to blame the EU, because it doesn't want to loose its insanely lucrative monopoly by which is takes 30% of the entire value of the App Store for its own profit.

Apple’s 30% doesn’t represent profit.  Apple incurs many costs to create, update and maintain the App Store.  There’s a wide gap between revenue and profit.  

Xed said:

eightzero said:

Xed said:

h4y3s said:

Remember folks, this is just an early prototype of the eventual "Apple iGlasses". This one built for programmers and developers to get their hands on something that works before they roll out the final product, which will look more like a pair of Ray-Ban's and you will wear all day!  Maybe in five or six years. 

1) They've moved away from i-naming scheme.
2) We are not 5 or 6 years away from getting an M-series chip (or any of the other HW) into something the size and weight of a pay of Ray-Bans.

In 1963 we were not 5-6 years away from landing on the moon.

Of course we were. Untess you're a conspiracy theorist, we landed there in 1969.

In 2017 we were not 5-6 from this device or a Mac Pro like they showed yesterday.

Clearly we were, and it was obvious since we already had the same SoC in a much smaller Mac Studio. All they did was effectively get PCIe slots in the chassis from the previous Mac Pro.

Or a camera like what it on the iPhone 14.

Sure it was as it's just a iteration.

Come to think about it, Apple does still seem to see a lot of iMacs, iPhones, and iCloud services these days.

Huh? Was that sentence suppose to say something?

Outside of your beyond ridiculous comparisons the bottom line is that your suggestions that VR goggles could be the size and weight of a pair of Ray-Bans in half a decade without anything to back up that projection is not just silly, but downright stupid. These aren't stand-alone AR glasses like Google Glass, but offer a fully immersive VR experience. Even if the tech could reasonably shrink to fit everything inside of a pair of lightweight sunglasses in a handful of years (again, it can't), you're still missing the fundamental issue with making a VR headset that is open around the sides, top and bottom as is the case with a pair of Ray-Bans.

Actually the limiting factor will be physics.  The Vision Pro extends a fair distance in front of the face not merely because there’s a lot of stuff in there, but because they have to mount the displays a minimum distance from the eyes, and that distance is farther than a pair of sunglasses sit in front of a wearer’s eyes. So it may never be able to be incorporated into a pair of glasses.  Google Glass did something different.  This level of immersion isn’t likely to be doable closer to the eyes. 

If you zoom in there’s a road named Chrysler Corp Proving.  Another named Chrysler Flat Track Rd and another named Chrysler Oval Track.   Interesting.  

macsince1988 said:

Apple did NOT earn $90.15B in fourth quarter of 2022.  That is their total revenue.  They earned $20.72B, for a profit margin of 22.99%.

If you have a business and you go out on a sales call to a prospect and you convince that prospect to become a customer, then you have earned that prospect's business.  There's more than one context in which the term earned can be used.  

Texans love their trucks, but a truck isn’t worth throwing your life away for.  That goes for both the thief and the owner.  Better to give the police the location and let them deal with it.  Goes without saying, I suppose.  

mac_dog said:

They want access to everyone’s phones. This is about the fact that this government is having such a difficult time controlling their narrative and they want more access to be able to control it. Yes, I’m talking about the genocide in Gaza. It’s making clear to everyone the myth that the US as global peacekeeper is just that when the reality is that we are still colonizing the world and we’re the global bullies. 

If Hamas lays down their weapons there will be no more war.  If Israel lays down their weapons there will be no more Israel.
- Golda Meir