Latko

martenf said:

I am not knowledgeable in IP laws etc but to me the sensible approach would be that if a company or someone buys patents then they can only be used as a basis for litigation if these patents are actually being used by the owner or the owner has clear plans on how they will be used within a reasonable period of time.
This topic on patent trolls keeps arising and it is absurd that this has not been resolved yet.
Of course, in the absence of laws as I indicated, perhaps another approach is to keep these trolls in court until they have no further resources left to fight the case. This course of action should only be available when the entity is non practicing in relation to the patents.

fred stein said:

Siri, like Apple's Maps, was mis-managed by Forstall. Then handed over to Eddie Cue, who had no ability in AI. Finally, Craig got the mandate. It seems Craig realized that AI / NLP is THE future and needed a fully dedicated expert. My guess he told Tim to hire the best and give him carte blanche, C-level authority. I'm total FanBoy, but Siri is terrible. It makes Lily Tomlin as Ernestine look like a genius. "Is this the party to whom I'm speaking" - Showing my age.....

MplsP said:

coolfactor said:

I support this. If Apple was aware of the situation, but failed to take precautions until *after* they received media attention, then they should be held accountable.

ericthehalfbee said:

coolfactor said:

I support this. If Apple was aware of the situation, but failed to take precautions until *after* they received media attention, then they should be held accountable.

You realize that bugs are commonly known about (or reported) long before a company fixes them, right? It’s common practice to keep things secret while you’re working on a fix. You don’t want the public (or bad actors) to know about the issue. Then you can release a fix before people even know there was a problem.

No doubt Apple was working on a fix when this news broke, and disabled FaceTime only after it became public. If this news story wasn’t reported it’s likely the next iOS release would have fixed the issue and nobody would have been the wiser.

I don’t see how Apple did anything wrong.

lkrupp said:

So within 24 hours of this breaking we have a lawsuit by some lawyer in Texas and a New York State investigation started. When Samsung phones started to randomly send your pictures to people in your contacts list did things happen this quickly or even at all? Just asking. When Alexa was discovered to be listening in did Governor Cuomo start an investigation? Just asking.

Apple reportedly 'knew' about the bug for a week before the story broke, but it's not clear if anyone in a position to do anything knew about it, of if that's just when the form was submitted. In an organization like Apple that is large and likely receives thousands of such reports a day, it would not be surprising if it took several days for someone to review the bug, do some testing to verify it, elevate it to the appropriate level and for someone who actually had the power to respond to take appropriate action.

After reports became public they rapidly shut down the service, effectively closing the bug until a patch can be issued. Whether that was because of the initial bug report or because of the media reports and publicity is unknown, but all things considered, I think Apple responded in a reasonable manner. 

Clearly, this was a bug, but I don't see how it's that much different from the thousands of other bugs that we read about.