The technology and consumer worlds are buzzing with Steve Jobs Wanted Android Destroyed. It is important to understand the trigger was not Android, but Windows. The Macintosh, introduced on January 24, 1984, changed the computing and consumer worlds forever. The leap from the IBM PC to the Macintosh was larger than the leap from Blackberry to the iPhone. Computer historians or us older technologists know that Apple did not invent the graphical interface or mouse - it was Xerox. Steve Jobs and all those engineers whose signatures are inside the first Macintoshes generated a product that freed the users from the details of computer operating systems. But the underlying ideas were not their own.
Macintosh users paid a premium - their hardware and software was priced at least 50 percent higher than IBM-compatible products. But because of the improved productivity and quality of their products, Apple was favored among both engineers and creative arts. Bill Gates of Microsoft subsequently began steering its products toward the graphical interface. Windows 1.0 was released in November 1985, but it was not until Windows 3.0 in 1990 that the IBM/Windows products could attract serious interest.
Windows 95 in August 1995 essentially caught up with Apple and layoffs began at the California-based company. Never again would Apple have the market share in personal and enterprise computers it once enjoyed because of its graphical interface and intuitive software.
Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and began steering the Apple brand from computers to consumer products. Of course it was the iPod in 2001 that ushered in today's consumer-oriented Apple. It is my belief that Jobs was determined to never again tolerate someone to catch up with a product like the Macintosh that resulted in his hatred for the Android.
Jobs continued to innovate with the iPhone, but his chief attack against the Android was patent litigation. As the world's leading consumer products company (remember when it was Sony?), Apple doesn't need the money it is making from patent litigation, but it is to protect the package it introduced in 2007.
This illustrates the tension that today's world faces with intellectual property. Back in the halcyon days of computers with IBM, Data General, Hewlett Packard, Digital Equipment Company, etc, it required more than an idea to be successful. It also required manufacturing, sales, and support. Today, all of those are a commodity. I'm continually amazed at Apple's stock cap of $364B. Because unlike the General Motors, General Electric, and IBM of yesterday, it does not have hard assets that even approach a single-digit percentage of its stock evaluation.
Long before the iPhone was introduced, you had probably noticed that your laptop computer's touchpad could respond to something other than a tap. Two decades ago, we had created touchscreens with LED arrays and photodetectors around the bezel of a CRT that allowed you to interact with a graphical interface without a keyboard or mouse. The technology was much cruder, but the idea was already there.
As a Blackberry user, you had also probably had several ideas about how to make a better phone before the iPhone was introduced. Quite possibly the iPhone featured some of the ideas you had conceived. So why does Apple obtain a world monopoly on an idea that you might have had earlier? And further, does 'first' even count, if you were not born yet and came up with the idea independently? Chances are that a court might agree with you, but you also understand the legal party with the deepest pockets usually prevails.
On the other side, with today's Asian manufacturing engines and American-style merchandising, no company is willing to design a product if a Taiwan or Chinese manufacturer can under price it within six months of market introduction. We have reached a milestone in civilization when we need a different form of protection for inventors, designers, manufacturers, and consumers. I'm not certain what it is, but I don't believe ideas alone should be protected. Ideas belong to civilization.
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