cloudmobile

Do you know why Apple never sued Schmidt for corporate espionage or Android for copyright infringement? Simple: Android didn't even support touchscreens until version 1.5. By then, the HTC Dream - a device that emulated the Blackberry, Microsoft CE and Nokia Symbian devices that preceded the iPhone - was on the market. It took Google until July 2009 - more than 2.5 years after the iPhone's design was made public - to so much as release an Android device that could support touchscreens. So either Schmidt stole ideas for Android from Apple ... and for some reason chose not to use them until 2009, and in the process incurred the risk that Microsoft, Nokia, Blackberry or some other competitor would beat them to market with a touchscreen design. Or Schmidt and Google saw the top-secret product for the first time in 2007 like everybody else, and UNLIKE Nokia, Blackberry, Microsoft etc. knew the device would succeed and immediately began to reverse engineer it. And since Apple didn't invent touchscreen mobile devices in the first place (that would have been IBM with the Simon in 1992) it was possible for them to do so without infringing on a single bit of Apple IP, or even needing to license tech from Apple (though they did need to license tech from Microsoft and others). Which is more likely? Answer .. the one that actually happened.

And you believe Facebook gain nothing from this? I know content providers have their own apps in Appstore, some are free and some are subscribe based. Are you saying that 'these content providers' are looking for a loophole to sell their services to iOS users for free?

Sigh . Let me answer your question with a question. Why are you so determined to blame this on Facebook instead of the providers? What did Facebook do to become Apple's enemy in your book before now?

Now to get back at your question directly. Facebook has never had an issue with the App Store policies before. So why would they now? The answer. They don't. Facebook is like Google. They don't need App Store revenue. In fact they don't want it. Do you know why? Ads. Facebook makes far more on ads than they ever would from people buying subscriptions through the App Store. Now look. Open your mind here and realize that there are other business models than Apple's. Like the business model that allowed Google to surpass Yahoo and Microsoft and become the world's second biggest company by giving away Chrome, Android, the GSuite software and nearly all their other products and services for free. 

Now please be willing to actually understand instead of doing the fanboy "I am closing my mind now because this information flies in the face of what I choose to believe about my favorite company" thing on purpose. Facebook doesn't want to use the subscription model for any of their services because they make less money that way. They can't make money by restricting themselves to 25% of the market and making a premium on hardware sales to that 25%. They make money off ads, and the way to make money off ads is to have as many users as possible engaging with their product as much as possible. The subscription model flies in the face of that because if they adopt that they will lose 50% to 75% of their customers off the bat. They don't want to write off those customers as "cheap", "uneducated", "unsophisticated", "moochers", "leeches", "no taste", "don't understand tech" etc. (The way that Apple fans view Android and Microsoft consumers.) They can make revenue off showing ads to those people too because their business model is volume not margin. To use a broadcast analogy, Google and Facebook are network TV where Apple is premium cable. Or Facebook is broadcast radio where Apple is satellite radio.

That is why the only consumer services that Google charges for are YouTube Red, Google Play Movies/TV/Books/Music and cloud storage. Now the latter has real infrastructure costs and if Google gave away unlimited cloud storage for free you would have 1 billion people uploading 5 TB of data just because. But the former? The content providers own the content and they want to be paid for it. 

The same is going on here. Hearst, Tronc, and the Washington Post are the ones who want - and need - this revenue. Facebook doesn't, and trust me if they could work out a way where they could provide this service for free they would. Yes, Facebook benefits. Why? Because right now Facebook serves up links and when you clink on a link you leave Facebook and go to the newspaper's site. This allows you to subscribe to the newspaper within the app, read the news content while staying in the app and still seeing Facebook ads. The paper gets the subscription revenue, Facebook gets the ad revenue and both win. But if there was some way for Facebook to get the ad revenue without the subscription component that is what they would do because that is what they do for every single other app that they have in the App Store. It would maximize the number of people who read the news content while staying in their app and in the process see their ads. Instead, 50%-75% fewer people will use this app than otherwise would. Facebook isn't happy with this, but they have no choice but to go along, because that way it makes the content providers their partners instead of their competitors and Facebook wants to keep their partnerships with the content providers in a way that maximizes the time that people stay on Facebook.

But hey, you go ahead and blame Facebook for this because you choose to believe that every other company is an enemy of Apple out to take away Apple's hard earned money.

You guys are funny. Roku has been on the market and the sector leader in its category for years. Now that Apple FINALLY updated Apple TV to compete in this category - not so much against Roku but Amazon Fire TV - all of a sudden Rokus work terrible, are impossible to understand and set up etc.? Which, for example, JUST HAPPEN to be the same arguments that you guys use against Android phones and Windows PCs? Hilarious. Well guys I have owned several Rokus. The difficult, arduous setup process is this: 1) create a Roku account using your email address 2) plug in your Roku to the HDMI port 3) plug in the power cable 4) connect the Roku to your Wi-Fi or Ethernet 5) sign in to the default streaming channels 6) add any new streaming channels that you want (which unlike Apple TV can be done either on the Roku itself or by managing it from the Roku website using the browser) That's it. It also just happens to be similar to the setup process of an Apple TV (which I have owned), smart Blu Ray player (which I have owned), iPads (which I have owned) and so forth. If anything a Roku is a breeze compared to the nightmare that is iTunes for Windows. Or the fact that there is no real web-based interface for the App Stores on either iOS or macOS. And all the things that the Apple TV does better than the Roku? Most people have no interest in. They aren't trying to do console-quality video games (there are Playstations, Switches and XBoxes that do it a lot better with much better content and don't cost that much more) or anything that would require all that CPU, GPU and RAM. The vast majority just want to stream Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and Amazon Prime. You're deluding yourself if you think any differently. Apple TV is for hardcore Apple fans who have a ton of content on iTunes. And not because it is inherently better at it by the way. It is only because Apple TV is the only practical way to access your iTunes content. But if you have content on Google Play, Amazon Prime and Ultraviolet, Roku is better because it can actually play all those things. If being all Apple all the time is good for you, then great. But the rest of the market will choose what is best for them. And yes, for them price is a factor. Especially considering that the best TVs on the market these days - Samsung, LG, Sony, Vizio - are already smart TVs anyway.

Wow, Samsung is only going to make a mere $10 billion dollars on the Galaxy S8. What a pity. They are utterly wasting their time and money and need to give it up. Right? Hilarious.

Anyway, you have to recognize that it was Samsung's using those components in their Galaxy line that attracted Apple's business in the first place. No Galaxy Round, Note 4 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S8 and no giant OLED screens in the iPhone 8 and iPhone X. Instead, Apple is still using 4 inch LCD screens on iPhones with huge bezels that have single core CPUs with no real multi-tasking capabilities ... the iPhone 8 is basically the iPhone SE except that it costs $799 instead of $399. And that means that Samsung is making like $25 off every iPhone instead of $110.

So by competing with Apple - which everyone insists is so evil and horrible - Samsung makes billions off their own phones AND billions off the iPhone.

Note: this article only talks about the $202 per device that Samsung components is making off Samsung mobile. It is not talking about how much money Samsung Mobile is making on selling devices. "The Galaxy S8 retails for $749, but often has a notably lower street price." That "street price" is a lot more than $202 isn't it?

Stop. Please stop. For goodness sakes. Whenever Apple accuses someone of infringing their patents or abusing FRAND, everyone sides with Apple and wants the offender that Apple accuses crushed by paying huge licensing fees,  having their products banned from the market, and massive financial penalties and even driven out of business outright. But when someone accuses Apple they are always a patent troll, Apple is free and clear and innocent, or the amount that they are seeking from Apple way exceeds the value of the patent because it is how Apple incorporates everyone else into their tech that gives the IP value in the first place. Look, there is being a fan and being a fanboy.

The same patent laws that applies to everyone else with Apple's IP applies to Apple with everyone else's IP. It is amazing: the same people who want Android banned despite a decades'-old Supreme Court ruling allowing one company to copy another company's UX/UI, a ruling that Apple has since taken advantage of themselves like everyone else. The same people who insist that Apple should have to pay pretty much pennies for critical hardware patents like ARM CPU designs and 2G/3G/4G designs without which smartphones and mobile tech in general wouldn't be practical AT ALL agreed with Apple's attempts to ban all Samsung products from the market - or pay a $50 per device licensing fee - over trade dress, rounded corners, icon shapes, home buttons and pinch-to-zoom.

It is hilarious. How many people wanted Oracle to drive Android off the market over APIs that Sun allowed EVERYONE to freely use at the time - and which Google could have easily rewritten if they didn't - do not want Apple to pay practically anything over ARM designs and wireless standards?

Here is the deal: Apple chose Wisconsin's designs over ARM Holdings' design. Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek and everyone else pay ARM Holdings, Inc. because the Snapdragon, Exynos etc. are based on the ARM Holdings base design. (In fact, Qualcomm had overheating issues with the Snapdragon 810 because they used an ARM Holdings design for the cores. When they used their own design that was derived from the ARM Holdings base design for the 820 the problem went away.) So your rationale for why Samsung and Qualcomm have to pay ARM Holdings but Apple doesn't have to pay the University of Wisconsin is what exactly?

Finally, you mention that it was a Wisconsin court, as if that is all nefarious or something. The problem is that this actually HELPS the University's case. Why? Because were UW-Madison some troll filing a flimsy case, they would have filed the lawsuit in East Texas like all the actual trolls do. Instead of court-shopping, the University of Wisconsin actually filed their case in the appropriate jurisdiction: where they are located. Why? Because they knew that they would win based on the merits of the case. And this is why UW-Madison has won every appeal on this case.

Apple will ride this out because it is cheaper to pay lawyers - who work for Apple and are on the payroll already for the most part - than it is to pay $1 billion. But they will pay eventually, just as Samsung paid Apple over rounded corners and icon placement eventually.