Posts by Gareth Ward
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Hard News: The not-so-Evil Empire, in reply to Simon Grigg,
That Apple invented the smartphone and gave us the design concept seems to have been handily absorbed into 21st Century mythology but the truth may be a little more complex.
Yes quite true, as per: http://i.imgur.com/vJpcW.png
The iPad/Galaxy Tab design case was quite interesting for this; the Judge included in her judgement old Japanese patents of Sharp tablets that looked quite similar. Of course she also held up both tablets and asked the Samsung lawyer to identify which was which from 10feet away - she couldn't. -
Hard News: The not-so-Evil Empire, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
The iPad is entirely useless when first purchased (or at least mine was) without iTunes. So immediately to even use the device I have to install that software and accept any terms it requires.
I wonder if you can return an iPad immediately post purchase if you don't accept the Terms and Conditions to start it up? Must be able to...
In this case Brian has found a condition in the terms he doesn't wish to agree to and as a result the usability of the product the bought and owns outright is seriously compromised
The upgradeability of the product he bought is compromised - the product as he bought it when he bought it remains exactly the same. The question is whether or not condition-free upgradeability is an implicit function you are purchasing...
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And now I look like I'm defending the Apple patent war - so will make it a little clearer: I get the background to Apple's claims (they feel there isn't progress and innovation from others, just copying of a successful idea) but they are arguing too widely on what constitutes their IP and the effect is they're holding back others from making their own variations on natural design themes. That limits incremental innovation.
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Hard News: The not-so-Evil Empire, in reply to Don Christie,
Gareth, so progress has to stop just because Apple says it should?
Huh? The whole point of that suite of lawsuits is that HTC/Google et al are making NO progress and just rehashing the form factor and design of Apple's initial progress in 2007. That they haven't borrowed bits n pieces to create something new, they've just copied an entire design.
There's a bunch of different patent claims in play - I know the Samsung tablet one was for "slavish copy of design" (I'd say a touchscreen tablet has a natural design but unsure how identical to the iPad it was), while the HTC one seems to be that Apple has been given a hugely wide patent for touchscreen usage that seems way too wide to be granted.
Completely agree that you don't want litigation to block commercial practice, and you don't want patents granted so widely that someone ends up owning a vrey natural feature or design, but I really don't think you can claim Apple is holding back waves of progress - it's holding back others from doing the same thing it's doing...
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Hard News: The not-so-Evil Empire, in reply to Don Christie,
Speaking from the "hordes of haters" to the "arse licky lovers" - do you not think that the hoops and loops Apple put their users are just a tiny bit ridiculous? I am stunned at how you consider these normal.
Could you expand on that? I don't see the hoop and loops of Apple as noticeably more hoopy or loopy than those of Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc? But I'm not one to pay significant attention to T&Cs, relying instead on the internet hivemind to alert me when anything is particularly unusual...
And then of course, there is this form of "evil".
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/ban-on-galaxy-tab-10-1-sale-upheld-on-htc-android-phone-import-denied/
From which I can only conclude that Apple have stopped innovating.Or you could conclude that HTC/Android (whole thing seems to be a proxy war against Google) ripped off the design work Apple did in both hardware and software. Personally I hate this level of litigation too, but I have to admit that smartphone development has been particularly innovative post iPhone - everyone just did exactly the same thing. There's a great image floating about of all the various form factors of phone up to 2007 (Nokia alone always had such a weird range of phones), then all the identical forms post.
I may have been suckered but I do believe this litigation at least partly reflect's Job's intense hate of the copying Google and their hardware partners did rather than a purely commercial blocking play./arse licky loving
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It wasn't long before various applications on his iPad stopped working and soon, when the operating system had an update, it stopped working all together. Brian couldn't get the updates because he hadn't agreed to the terms and conditions.
This struck me as the one interesting point in the article yesterday (I completely failed to see how anything in it stacked up to an "Evil Empire" charge) - and re-read the article a couple of times to get what he meant. I assume this guy has refused to update iOS because of Apple's new terms (fair enough) and therefore has gotten to a point where app upgrades mean the app fails because it won't run on an out-of-date version of the OS.
So in effect, if you don't like the changes Apple makes to it's terms, you plausibly lose the ability to update current and/or purchase new applications. That strikes me as a) not an Apple thing, more a general OS thing and b) painful but generally fair. You buy the device to run as it currently is - you choose, or not, to advance that and "purchase" additional functionality under future terms. -
Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Euan Mason,
Gareth, I'm not convinced that the policy is motivated by profit.
Agreed, I was just thrashing an old meme sorry!
At my harshest I suspect the PM and his "target NZer" want to identify the best school to send their kid too, not the best educational outcome for their child (beyond the fact they probably equate the two). And the best school is the one with the "best" kids getting the best scores in reading, riting, rithmetic... The "white flight" articles this morning possibly another symptom of that thinking. -
Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Euan Mason,
How do you get a half decent NZ educational system?
1. Start with one of the best educational systems on the planet.
2. Elect a bunch of shallow ideologues.
3. Wait.4. ?
5. PROFIT! -
Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Greg Wood,
Why should I not take my three crazy early-days kids and my large tax contribution elsewhere? Tell me.
Because this awesome country is far more than any particular set of clowns that happen to sit in Parliament at a given point in time?
(Sorry, my usual response to people who want to flee the country over given Governmental policy - when it comes to your kids education I certainly understand the desire to get it right...)
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Will ERO be the ones adminstering collation and reporting of National Standards results? I must admit to finding their school reports bland, brief and non-commital* and would much prefer the money, energy and political capital going into failed standardised testing to be invested in more comprehensive ERO reporting and some form of visualisation reporting approach to better communicate the quality of the school.
*Limited engagement to be fair, but being the father of a 3y/o looking to buy a new home you find yourself investigating things you always thought far too suburban and cliched...