That's a geeks way of looking at it. 'Oooh, look at the numbers, they're much bigger!'. If Apple's success should teach us anything, it's that the numbers don't matter. Virtually every one of Apple's products exists in a market where there are other competing products that have more megapixels, more megahertz, bigger storage... and yet in most of those markets, Apple still sells as well as the competition do. In some much better. This is partly because most of the smartphone/tablet makers seem to believe you can sell these devices like PCs - more numbers, bigger numbers, BETTER numbers. But the thing is, all the numbers are big enough now. Do people really care that one PC has a 2.8Ghz CPU whereas another has a 3.1GHz CPU? Not in the main, because they know now pretty much all computers are 'fast enough'. So they're not looking at that any more.

People in the main don't ask numbers questions any more. They don't care about quantitative questions, they care about qualitative questions. What can I do with it, is it easy to use, does it work with the stuff I already have? To paraphrase an old saying, Apple's pitch is 'never mind the width, feel the quality'.

Everyone else is still playing a numbers game the mass public don't care about any more. Until they realise that, Apple will continue to largely steal their lunch.

Jon

It is not as simple as that. Uninformed consumers probably don’t care, but consider how they make their purchase decisions. They often ask for advice people whose opinion they value. Friends, colleagues, family members. They will ask somebody who knows about the state of smartphone/tablet market. So even if only one geek know about these legal issues that you say nobody cares about, that person will influence the buying decision of a dozen of uninformed consumers. So maybe the impact of these tussles is bigger than you think.

This is how I see it: Apple is clearly screwing over its competitors (I can’t say I am surprised or shocked). But they are also screwing over its partners with the Appstore commission pricing and sales restrictions (you might not agree with me, doesn’t really matter). What is the chance that Apple is screwing over (is that is a strong word maybe you put “being fair to”) its customers? I look at things like antenna gate, proprietary screws, prop. firmware in HDDs, constant war against jailbroken phones and I really can’t say that I like what I see.

You might say I wrong and that Apple is right but at the end I have only once recommend buying an iphone to somebody. To most people I recommend Android. And no, I don’t have Android myself. And it is not because I think iphone is not a good product. It is because I don’t like the way Apple goes about its business. Their attitudes, values and their philosophy.

You're perfectly entitled to not like what you see. However, I look at things like 20.34 million iPhones; 9.25 million iPads; 3.95 million Macs and 7.54 million iPods sold in the last quarter alone and say that's a hell of a lot of people who couldn't give a frak.

It’s nothing geeky at all. That will be the shareholders’s view. Remember, the first duty of any company is to the shareholders. Shareholders want a return in their investment, and companies do this by increasing the value of those shares. Basically, this means making a profit. Profits go up, share values go up, and shareholders make money either through dividends (there is no obligation to pay out dividends - Apple follows this practice), or through selling stock.

So the mechanics of a company will be to build up a portfolio of products, as well as trademarks, patents and other assets. If one of those is threatened, usually by a competitor, then the course of action is to stop the dilution of that property by either requiring it to be stopped, or through some form of licensing option. This normally requires some kind of legal process. Failure to act on any kind of infringement will cause the value of that property to drop, and this will affect the share price. A company has to be seen to act. It builds confidence.

When looking at the tech industry, I am seeing a HUGE amount of trading on intellectual properties. It’s become a market in itself, with regulation provided not by some form of independent regulator, but via the law courts. What makes the whole software patent issue laughable is that you are not patenting a mechanism - ie a series of pulleys or gears to move your widget from point A to point B, but the IDEA that you can move the widget from point A to point B. Patent trolls seem to be hoarding these, and we are seeing how Apple’s App store developers are being troubled by this at the moment (it will be Android devs’ turn soon). However, other companies do similar: Microsoft have a whole load of patents what it’s using against the open source community. Apple does it, Adobe does, Samsung, and the rest. In the emerging tablet market, there is a huge scramble to be first, and the weapon of choice is the patent.

In the USA, litigation is the cornerstone for dominance. Here, this seems an anathema; we are used to seeing businesses failing due to poor performance and natural selection. However, in the USA dominance does not have to be achieved through the sales of goods or services. Competition can, and is, be wiped out in the law courts.

You keep missing the point a lot, don't you?!

Yes but consider that they have to wage war against jail-broken phones because they have contracts with telcos that want to maintain that monopoly. They have to do the same with music. The music labels demand DRM even though everyone says that it is only punishing legitimate customers. The App store can be problematic for developers. They are much more generous terms than some developers allow. I have one programs that requires activation on each machine and is restricted two just two machines. I would love it to be available on more than that, but developers need to decide where their best future lies. With small developers it can be very good. Even allowing for the commission that Apple take, that is still less than what they would lose when they sell via boxed retailers by a long margin. It also reduces the costs of maintaining physical copies.

I didn't realise you had a point. Although you do seem to be living under the delusion - not unusual for geeks - that your techno cares are shared by the mainstream, or that your views have any sort of influence. Sorry to break this to you...

They don't.

And the tens of millions of people who buy Apple-branded kit every quarter just go to show that the sort of things you care so much about (screws and firmware) are marginal issues fretted over by the very few and the very, very geeky.

The screws issue is more of an issue to those that tinker. I do not tinker therefore for me it is not an issue. As for having the latest kit in the machine. Is that really important? Look at the numbers of companies which still use old versions of software and kit. As long as it does what it is needed to do then is that important. In three years time I will upgrade my kit to what is available then. The fact that it does not have the latest processor is not important when your machine is only a year old.

I'd imagine there must be at least 12 people who will be overjoyed at this news.

Jon

good

That article is a bit, erm, crap to be honest.

According to the German press, the injunction hasn't been lifted or altered at all. Doubts have arisen as to whether the Düsseldorf court has the authority to apply an injunction outside Germany.

That article is a bit, erm, crap to be honest.

According to the German press, the injunction hasn't been lifted or altered at all. Doubts have arisen as to whether the Düsseldorf court has the authority to apply an injunction outside Germany.[/quote]
Feel free to link a better one...

The linked post in the rather poorly written TechRadar "story" would be a good start.

Galaxy Tab 10.1 injunction suspended for all EU countries except Germany



That would appear to be the case.

Personally, I think Apple should have let the whole thing slide, although I say that without knowing the internal reasoning for the case. Maybe they really felt there was a case of infringement ; which companies - and individuals - are perfectly entitled to sue over. But to my un-lawyered eye, I just say "meh". Anyway, it's not like the Galaxy is an iPad competitor, it's more a threat to other Android tablets - let 'em eat each other I'd say.

Count me among them.